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A DAUGHTER 
OF ADAM 


CORRA HARRIS 





A DAUGHTER 
OF ADAM 

BY 

CORRA HARRIS 

AUTHOR OF “THE EYES OF LOVE,” <( MY SON,” “HAPPILY 
MARRIED,” “a CIRCUIT RIDER’S WIFE,” “THE 
RECORDING ANGEL,” ETC. 

AND IN COLLABORATION WITH FAITH HARRIS LEECH: 
“from SUNUP TO SUNDOWN” 



NEW 



YORK 


GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 





<1 A 


t. 


\ \ s\ ^ 

n ^ 




COPYRIGHT, 1923 , 

BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



COPYRIGHT, 1923 , 

BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY 

A DAUGHTER OF ADAM. II 
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


MAR 30 *23 a 

©CU698878 





A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


I 




s 




A DAUGHTER 
OF ADAM 


PART ONE 

CHAPTER I 

I sat up, startled out of a deep sleep. Who had 
called me? I felt called. And there were no voices. 
Stillness, an immense silence. 

The room was dark but strangely familiar, as if 
the very things in it had known me a long time. I 
leaned forward and stared through the open win¬ 
dow—pale greenish-ivory boughs spreading there 
beneath a lavender mist of bloom in the moonlight. 
Ah, I remembered now, the crape myrtle tree out¬ 
side my bedroom window at Redfields! 

All this in the first flash of consciousness after 
the profound unconsciousness of sleep. 

Instantly I recalled what had happened. The 
message that reached me three nights ago in New 
York announcing father’s illness and summoning 

7 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


me to his bedside. The scattering of a party of 
friends who had been dining with me that evening, 
as fine feathers whirl and disappear in a sudden gust 
of wind. Oliver Winchell waiting while I changed 
and flung a few things together in my bag. The 
mad rush to catch the midnight train. That last 
moment in the deep shadow beyond the station gate 
when Oliver caught me to his breast, his anguish 
at this parting, like a lover’s, deeper than his sym¬ 
pathy with my grief. Then the long hot journey, 
the sleepless night above rattling rails. The delays, 
the unbearable suspense. My arrival at last in the 
gray dawn of this day at Redfields, the pallor of 
everything in this light, the creeping silence of 
wakeful people in the house, the sibilant coming 
and going of neighbors all day long, the awful curi¬ 
osity of the living about the approach of death, or 
if death might by the hardest be kept out of this 
house. And now the end of the day when I had 
fallen asleep exhausted by the long strain. 

I sprang hastily to my feet, feeling guilty of this 
rest, and slipped noiselessly across the hall to the 
open doorway of a deeper silence. 

The nurse seated beside the night lamp, busy with 
her chart, looked up and motioned me not to enter, 
meaning that this was sleep at last and that it must 
not be disturbed. 

Through the shadowy darkness I made out the 

8 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


immense bed in the midst of this room. It was a 
bed not made for any man, but for one man who 
excelled other men and who would not jam his 
breath against walls in a corner but must lie promi¬ 
nent even when he slept. The covers on it were 
awry, dragged and tumbled as if some old Jupiter 
had been kicking his clouds about and was now 
wrapped in them with his huge knees sticking up, 
his head resting high upon the pillows, his face the 
tragic gray shadow of a great countenance with 
closed eyes and bristling brows. 

I withdrew and came softly down the stairs, hear¬ 
ing again the creak of the very steps that used to 
creak long ago beneath my younger feet. 

I had been born in this house, in that proud old 
room upstairs where father now lay having it out 
with his last enemy. But for years it had been 
no more than a memory, like verses learned in 
childhood. Now each familiar object came back 
to me like a line from these verses. The flaming 
feathered birds perched on golden harps in the gray 
wall paper seemed to sing a flowery tale of fairer 
years. There was the same round table halfway 
down the wide hall, the same old mahogany sofa 
magnificently withdrawn at the farther end, the gun 
rack behind the front doors, the tall clock opposite 
the stairway with its raucous tick, still rebukingly 
truthful. 


9 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


How far apart every thing seemed—not bare but 
spacious, as if this house had been built by men for 
men with a long stride; nothing small or merely 
pretty in it, nothing weak or superfluous. A hurri¬ 
cane might blow through it and do no great dam¬ 
age, everything was so far apart, so heavy, and 
had been where it was for such a long time. 

I experienced a curious sense of expansion, as if 
my mind let go little things and spread in this an¬ 
cient spaciousness. The great doors of this hall were 
flung wide. I passed through on to the flagged 
floor of the veranda. A low wall divided this 
veranda from the grounds beyond. I moved across 
between the scattered chairs and sat on the wall, 
leaning against the column behind me. 

Not in years had I seen such a huge night, clear, 
hot, and blossoming with stars. No narrowness any¬ 
where, no masses of buildings, nor spires, nor towers 
to break the dark rim of this darkness. No dew, 
no scent, save the dusty odor of the famished earth 
in a midsummer drought. Not a sound save the 
crickets strumming in the withered grass and the 
whispering of poplar leaves turning and turning in 
the moonlight like a thousand tiny silver fans. 

There is no darkness compared to the blackness 
to be found in the cities. But it is always inside, 
never above. It gathers in cells, behind the doors 
of poverty and crime. Night there is only the eve- 

10 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

ning gown the town wears when the day’s work 
is done, slashed and seamed and pearled with myriad 
lights, fantastically splendid; but it lacks the ma¬ 
jesty and mystery of infinite darkness. 

I had been for so many years the companion of 
these noisy, tinkling, spangled nights that now I 
had no thoughts equal to this vastness, peopled with 
stars and shadows; only a vague fear when from 
time to time I looked up at the windows of father’s 
room, listening, waiting for what might be going to 
happen there. 

At last, as one invariably slips back from every 
other experience, however strange or terrifying, into 
that which is familiar, I found myself thinking of 
my own affairs; ordinary things, such as what had I 
done with the key to my apartment? I had for¬ 
gotten to leave instructions about forwarding the 
mail. I remembered suddenly that the proofs of my 
book lay on my desk, still to be corrected. I must 
write to Oliver about this, about everything. I 
would ask him to send the proofs to Redfields. 

Ten years ago I had gone to New York, as so 
many men and women go, to achieve a career. This 
is a brave thing to do, but we do not know that 
until we are committed to the adventure. I was 
in no need of a career. Few women are; we only 
choose one from lack of interest or because we are 
dissatisfied in whatever condition we find ourselves. 

11 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


This was exactly my situation. Father was a man 
who kept his womenkind in the background, simply 
by occupying the whole front of life. Mother had 
died there when I was a young girl, quite peace¬ 
fully, of that feminine inanition which destroys 
so many women. I had no mind for such a fate. 
I had been born with a bee in my bonnet. My 
gender, it appeared, was an accident. I had the 
nature of a woman, but the will and courage of my 
father, who was very man. We loved each other. 
We even suffered from a sort of indignant admira¬ 
tion for each other, but we could no more endure 
one another than two restless and affirmative bodies 
can occupy the same space at the same time. 

Finally, after a series of violent scenes, I was 
permitted to have my wish, which was to go to 
New York and earn my living as a writer. My 
only qualification for this profession at the time 
was a certain passion for words, as another might 
love lines and colors, and a few things accepted by 
adventurous editors. It made no difference, father 
scornfully informed me, what kind of writer I be¬ 
came, so that I did not return to Redfields until I 
was sobered and humbled by some kind of success. 

This condition was momentary. Many times dur¬ 
ing the years that followed he had implored me 
to come home, but with that manly perversity 
which I had inherited from him I put off the prodi- 

12 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

gal s return until I should have made the big success 
which every author covets. 

There is a difference between honest thinking 
and the mere manufacture of ideas. To think cor¬ 
rectly one must have a creed, some kind of faith 
which purges and exalts the mind. And one must 
have standards by which to test human experience. 
In the manufacture of ideas one uses the same 
mental machinery without reference to creeds or 
standards of life. One simply reproduces impres¬ 
sions, however perverted or fallacious. This is an 
unscrupulous business, but profitable—especially to 
writers of fiction. The truth is difficult to drama¬ 
tize and hard to sell. It is much easier to produce 
the fiction antics of human nature, its decadent 
moods and frailties. I wrote this kind—popular 
stuff—and got away with it. I assumed a name, a 
man’s name, and literally earned it in the best as 
well as the worst magazines in this country. It was 
like living a double life. I had a taste for that. 
Most people have, especially women, who have no 
privacy, their virtues and limitations being known 
to all men. For five years I enjoyed the privilege 
of hearing my stories discussed, branded as in¬ 
famous, praised as the work of a man with genius, 
before I was discovered. Then I was obliged to take 
my place in a certain reeling, dissolving circle of 
artists and literary folk. But to this day there are 

13 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


some tens of thousands of readers in this country 
who have never surrendered their contention that 
the name signed to this chronicle is that of a man, 
or at the very least an elderly woman who wears 
a little black Sabbath bonnet on the prayerful head 
of her pieties and a rusty cape over her philosophy 
of life. 

However that may be, one thing is certain: Since 
the year 1910, when this performance of mine began 
in New York, I have lived. Like father I had a 
gift for living, rather than that one many women 
have for merely suffering. I craved excitement, 
folly, wisdom, and my own share of the spoils. I 
was never satiated nor tired of the fray. I had 
health, red hair, a clear skin, a rollicking energy of 
the spirit and what you may call an open-faced, 
blue-eyed mind. There are words that suggest cer¬ 
tain colors, like “resurrection,” which recalls that 
first tender golden green of leaves in the early 
spring. So the word “candor” always seemed to 
me of an entrancing shade of blue, an artless word 
like the eyes of a child, who sees everything and 
occasionally exposes something with unconscious 
but impish wit. In this sense I had a candid mind, 
neither malicious nor merciful, but enterprising and 
irresponsible about tearing the covers off the hidden 
thoughts 6f other people and writing them into 
whatever I happened to be writing at the time, with- 

14 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

out knowing or caring where I obtained them. 
Nothing can be more innocent. It is a sort of right 
of way one gets through the minds of his fellow 
men and uses like any other franchise. This ac¬ 
counted in some measure for the uncanny quality of 
my most trivial stories; also for a certain fearful 
distinction I had among the men and women of my 
own profession. I was the least cynical, the most 
believing disciple of human nature among them. 
But I had a reputation for satire, which is what 
many people think the truth is. 

In spite of the fact that I had worked and played 
furiously during these years, now at the age of 
thirty-two my youth was still preserved by this for¬ 
tunate circumstance: I had never lacked for lovers. 
One lover cannot do it, however faithful, but one 
lover after another may keep a woman ageless a 
long time after she is no longer really young. Each 
of them discovers in her a different cause for en¬ 
chantment, so that at last all her banners are fly¬ 
ing, every vanity and every virtue exalted by these 
standard bearers of love. I was splendidly en¬ 
dowed with this sense of charm and power which 
frequent and different lovers unconsciously develop 
in a woman. I had a reputation for discretion, 
which enhanced me. I was a cheerful and unscrupu¬ 
lous capitalist who owned myself. I was one of 
those women whom men court with a vindictive will 

15 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


to win, chiefly for the victory of the achievement. 

I do not think well of this interpretation of my¬ 
self, but it is truthful—and the truth about any one 
of us is rarely flattering if we tell the whole 
of it. Still if you are a woman it is something not 
to be vanquished and to have kept your heart and 
liberty with a sort of singing, humorous valor. For, 
after all is said, every lover is an adversary. One 
is not morally bound to yield, and one is not morally 
obliged to be less lovable for conscience’s sake. 
That indicates a kind of simpleton’s conceit which 
I never had. 

For more than a year I thought I should end by 
marrying Oliver Winchell. “End” is the last word 
of every woman’s imagination about marriage. It is 
the one full stop she makes in life at an early age, 
and she really never expects to get over it or go on 
or be her own self again. I have often wondered if 
men feel the same way. 

Nature appeared to have made Oliver with prob¬ 
ably two strokes of a very pale pencil. He was a 
tall man, graceful with that angular grace of a deli¬ 
cately articulated frame. His knees and elbows 
were prominent, as if at all times he folded himself 
with an eye to the shadow he might make on the 
wall or the image he might cast upon the retina 
of some eye. His face was a poem for which you 

16 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


could find only the rhythm, not the words—lean, 
pallid and very handsome. Dark hair, luminous 
eyes, not feminine in their softness, but mystical, as 
if he might have been a prophet but was not, being 
utterly and intentionally indifferent to the spiritual 
exercise of prophesying. Mentally he achieved 
those subtleties which do not exist but must be 
created, emotions so delicate that the human of 
you does not feel them. Attenuated spiritual stuff 
which denied matter as something negligible, if not 
actually repulsive. I cannot say why, but his 
thoughts always seemed to me to come up out of 
the grave, stone images of the imagination in for¬ 
lorn poses of negation. 

He wrote so well that he rarely published any¬ 
thing. I am certain that he did not care, as the rest 
of us did, to see his mind advertised in the printed 
word. He was serious and industrious, however, 
at this business of dissolving language. But any 
real effort was offensive to him. He was honestly 
convinced that there could be no rational reason for 
achievement. What had been achieved was not 
good and would not last. The only thing that 
lasted was dead dust. The minute life infested any¬ 
thing the processes of decay began. Life, he swore, 
was a perpetual form of decay and decadence. 

He was a very rich man, but he despised money, 

17 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

using it frugally and decently, like a poor man with 
fine virtues. The clawing, scrambling acquisitive 
world to Oliver was like the fox the Spartan boy 
carried beneath his cloak without a murmur even 
while the fox devoured him. It was this air of 
high fortitude which attracted me. An immaterial 
man in a material universe appealed to my imagi¬ 
nation, and in secret to the mischievous humor all 
women feel toward men. He was a new adventure 
in the kingdom of love, and as a lover he had a 
gossamer use of words, very flattering to one who 
had been so frequently courted according to her 
strictly feminine realities. I was no metaphysician, 
but a woman easily taken in by a florescent lover be¬ 
cause there was nothing in Oliver’s pale passion 
which inspired the usual defenses against him. I 
do not know why it is the instinct of every woman 
to deny her instincts, but it is. Modesty is a gar¬ 
ment her mind weaves and wears to conceal her natu¬ 
ral emotions. There was no occasion for such fem¬ 
inine privacy between Oliver and me, because he 
inspired no such emotions. I simply enjoyed the 
odd distinction of being the dear anathema of his 
spirit; the woman whom he resented above all other 
women because her very existence stultified his con¬ 
victions and gave a meaning to life, when from his 
point of view life had no intelligible meaning, but 
was a sort of recurrent disease in aimless dust. I 

18 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

leave it to those who have studied the various effects 
of decadence to explain why he excited in me the 
keenest interest and curiosity. 

But now, seated in this tranquil darkness, watch¬ 
ing the black shadows thicken beneath the drifting 
moon over Redhelds, I began to think of Oliver with 
a strange lassitude. I tried to visualize him. How 
would I feel toward him here 4 ? Standing upon this 
scroll of land that rolled away into the vast dark¬ 
ness, I felt that he would be strangely diminished. 
He did not belong. He would be no more than one 
of those rarefied sentences that he could write. And 
in this place such a sentence would not mean any¬ 
thing. For here was something older than civiliza¬ 
tions or cities or the attenuated intellectual dust of 
men’s minds. This was the great countenance of 
the Earth, the big thing, the one tremendously real 
thing that neither changed nor passed, upon which 
the Lord breathed the winds in the beginning, before 
ever Adam received the breath of life—still func¬ 
tioning like the almighty will of God, forever liv¬ 
ing, forever silent, keeping the confidence of all 
men’s bones. What could Oliver say commensurate 
with this 4 ? And the worst of it was that I felt 
that he would say something. 


i 


19 


CHAPTER II 


Sometimes you may be born again, as you were 
the first time, by no will of your own. The wind 
of destiny gets you, blows you out of the world 
that was your world and out of the life that was 
your life. Your former thoughts and deeds pass 
away. They are not. And you begin to be again, 
shriven of yourself, of your diaphanous vanities, of 
the very virtues that fitted you so well but are now 
far too small. 

Until this moment I had no sense of permanency 
in this wide place. I had been called to Redfields 
by father’s illness. Presently I should return to 
New York, where my life and my work lay straight 
before me. I was still thinking of Oliver as a pos¬ 
session, open to criticism, no more maybe than a sort 
of intellectual condiment, but belonging to me and 
to the existence I had chosen. But now I recalled 
something that Doctor Fosberry had said to me in 
the late afternoon. 

I had followed him from the room where father 
lay tossing upon his bed, unable to speak, equally 
unable to sleep, regarding us with a fierce question 
in his clouded eyes. 

“He will be quiet presently. This is merely the 

20 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

momentum of his violent vitality. It will pass. 
He will be changed,” he had said. 

“How changed?” I asked tremblingly. 

He laid his two hands upon my head, drew them 
with rough tenderness over my hair. 

“Thick as a horse’s tail, Nancy! Still red and 
rumpled. It used to be the color of the freckle on 
your nose. Bless me, lass, you have not lost that 
freckle, have you?” he exclaimed, holding me at 
arm’s length, turning my face to the light, pursing 
up his lips and squinting at me through his glasses. 

“Ah, there it is; you have kept it, the little sun 
kiss!” he murmured, nodding his head approvingly. 

“I was the first man to lay eyes on you, Nancy! 
You came into the world in a fine rage. You had 
both fists doubled. It was here at the head of these 
stairs that I laid you in your father’s arms,” he 
went on, rearing back, as if he still held this lively 
burden. 

“Your father was coming up the steps, taking 
them two at a time, his long legs working like 
pistons. Ts it a boy?’ he roars. 

“ ‘No, it’s a witch,’ I told him, and laid you in 
his arms. 

“He was mad as fire, wanting a son. But you 
defied him. You blazed him a glance. You bowed 
your back and yelled. You fought him. He was 
afraid of you! 


21 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


C£ c Kedie McPherson/ I said, ‘you have begotten 
what will turn you and rule you at last.’ ” 

“But you were saying just now—” I began. 

“And you did, Nancy, you had us all going. You 
had no sense but your own sense, no will but your 
own will. I remember the day you ran away— 
not three years old—your father raging up and 
down this place with everybody on it looking for 
you. Your mother, poor lady, lying in a dead faint, 
for fear of what might have happened to you, and 
me running about distracted with physicking her and 
waiting for news from the searchers. 

“They never did find you! But toward the mid¬ 
dle of the afternoon you toddled round the corner 
of the house. And you had this freckle on your 
nose. You went off and got it, and that has been 
your way always. You would have what you 
wanted,” he concluded and regarded me attentively, 
the crinkles about his eyes fading. 

“But there are things that come to us, lass. We 
do not seek them. They come,” he began again. 

“Yes, about father, you were saying just now 
that he will be—changed. How do you mean*?” 
I urged, seeing that during these fine speeches there 
was a mist of tears in his eyes. 

“I cannot tell you, my dear,” he answered, sigh¬ 
ing. “He will be different. Never again the man 
he has been. Nature, Nancy, has clapped a lid on 

22 




A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


him. He will live, I think. He will recover his 
speech, he may be fairly active, but he will never 
come out from under. A slight stroke, but enough 
to put the whole man that he was away.” 

He stood looking down while he told me this, the 
sun shining from the window through his thin white 
hair on the pink skin beneath, the tears glisten¬ 
ing on his cheeks. A little round-bodied man in a 
black frock coat that hung away from his legs, be¬ 
cause he always seemed to be walking out of his 
coat. 

“You understand, don’t you?” he asked. “It 
means that he needs you,” he explained gently. 

“Yes,” I whispered. 

“Your place and your duty are here at Redfields. 
You cannot go back to New York.” 

“No, not now,” I answered faintly. 

“Not until he is gone. It may be years.” 

We stood for a moment in this silence. 

“Do you mind so much?” he asked. 

“I can think now only of father—what you have 
told me,” I evaded. 

“The heart of you speaks, Nancy! Time comes 
when life drops out of her periods, and that is the 
end of the sentence. You cannot change it, even if 
it falls, as this one does, in the middle of your own 
career. We are all proud of you, but you have other 
work laid out for you here. It is finer than the 

23 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


writing of a fine book, and it will not be so bad once 
you are used to it—to him, I mean,” glancing at 
me. “Nature made Kedie McPherson a great man, 
but not a good one. You will probably have a tre¬ 
mendous child on your hands.” 

“Child?” I repeated. 

“Well, something like that. I have told you. 
He could be changed some and no great harm done. 
There was a strain of flaming peat in him. You 
know what I mean. He lived in a blast. The 
smoke of his deeds has been curling about here for 
fifty years. The wonder is that such a conflagration 
of a man could last so long. Now it is over. The 
peat smolders and the wind of his will has died 
down. It will not come again.” 

I felt that this kind old man who had seen me 
into the world was now trying with awkward tender¬ 
ness to close the door of it to me. What he had 
been saying had a meaning beyond that of his Ossian 
eloquence in disposing of father’s roaring career. 

“What are you trying to tell me?” I demanded. 

“That you have a man’s task before you here, as 
well as a woman’s tender duties,” holding me now 
with a steady gaze, as one supports another across 
a dangerous passage. 

“Yes, what is it? Go on!” I exclaimed, feeling 
the chill of some disaster. 

24 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


“Your father has been slipping for years. He 
has lost more than a thousand acres of Redfields 
plantation. What remains of it is mortgaged— 
this house, everything.” 

With my eyes still fixed on his a shadow black as 
blind darkness seemed to pass between us. In the 
bright sunlight I could not see his face. I experi¬ 
enced a curious dizziness, as if all familiar things 
were passing away. I did not know until this mo¬ 
ment that Redfields had never ceased to be the very 
foundation of my life, that subconsciously even dur¬ 
ing these last years in New York this roof was still 
the personal private roof over my head. 

Somehow I found my hand in his, held tightly 
with trembling strength. 

“Come here,” he said, drawing me to the window. 

“Do you see that gap in the Big Woods ?” He in¬ 
dicated a wide stretch of land through the trees. 

“Never before has there been a break in that 
forest. Six hundred acres of the finest timberland 
in the state. Last winter your father sold it, the 
whole tract, and the cleared land this side as far as 
the river.” 

“But why*?” I gasped. 

“Had to do it. Price of cotton down. Notes 
falling due that he could not meet. And there was 
the interest on the mortgage. You know what a 

25 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


magnificent notion he had of his integrity. Every 
debt was a debt of honor to him. This made his 
credit rating fabulous, and he was reckless.” 

“But how did he contract these debts 4 ? Father, 
as I remember him, was—frugal,” I said, hesitating 
over the last word, to make it kind since he lay 
stricken, but mindful that an old contention between 
us had been his parsimony. 

“Yes,” he admitted, “in a way he was the stingi¬ 
est man I ever knew about little things. He would 
always borrow a match to light his pipe, rather than 
use one of his own.” 

We exchanged a smile, recalling a certain legend 
connected with father. 

One spring morning years ago, after a particularly 
stormy revival in Mount Pleasant Baptist Church, 
the congregation assembled on the banks of Red- 
fields River to witness the ceremony of baptizing re¬ 
cent converts to the faith. 

The people stood among the tall alder flowers 
and wild lilies, silent, waiting with bowed heads. 
Suddenly every man removed his hat as the preacher 
waded out into the stream, his long coat tails float¬ 
ing on it, accompanied by Archie Winch, who was 
about to be baptized to make sure of the remission of 
his sins, which were many, because he was old, and 
a blacksmith, and had the flare of his red forge on 
his reputation. At this solemn moment, when noth- 

26 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


ing should have occurred to distract the concentra¬ 
tion of prayers upon old Archie, father, who towered 
conspicuously above everybody else, stepped forth, 
his broad white hat crushed politely to God beneath 
his arm, his hair rising like a red crest above his 
fine fierce face, and created a scandalous hiatus be¬ 
tween the carnal and the spiritual. He wanted a 
match. He made a hasty canvass among the men 
for one, and when it appeared that no man carried 
matches in his strictly Sabbath pockets father, look¬ 
ing slightly critical of his fellow men, whisked a 
hand hastily into his own pocket, drew forth a small 
silver box he always carried filled with matches and 
artlessly spent one, cupping his long fingers against 
the wind over the bowl of his pipe and sending a fine 
spiral of smoke just as the preacher thrust Winch 
deep beneath the purling flood with solemn invoca¬ 
tions. 

“But when it came to his sense of himself he was 
tremendous,” Doctor Fosberry went on after a 
pause. “He would not commit a small sin nor prac¬ 
tice any of the minor virtues. If he needed only a 
hundred dollars he borrowed a thousand, out of a 
sort of contempt for owing any man a little debt.” 

“How well you knew him,” I said with a sigh. 

“You must just forgive him, Nancy, and do the 
best you can with what is left, Tou can save it. 
These hills and valleys have bred McPhersons since 

27 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


this state was a British colony. You have the brains 
and courage to clear it of the mortgage, as the first 
Kedie McPherson cleared the forests from this rich 
red land. Don’t let go! That is what your father 
was doing. He had lost his man’s grip on the land 
that made him and kept him!” 

The woman I had become refused to meet this 
challenge. I turned and stood staring through the 
window at the wide level land as one looks at a page 
of history which was once the history of his family, 
but no longer is, because the breed you have become 
does not make history but money, probably, or a 
name, or some transient distinction. You have be¬ 
come a current event. You do not last. 

I was thinking something like that as my gaze 
wandered across the fields to the break in the forest 
on the hills beyond. 

“Who bought the Big Woods ?” I asked indif- ' 
ferently. 

“Manson, Black Manson,” Doctor Fosberry an¬ 
swered. 

“The name is not familiar,” I said. 

“Nor the man. Stranger. Dropped down here 
like a young eagle from nowhere, with his pockets 
full of gold, and bought that land of your father’s 
before we knew it was for sale,” he told me. 

“He built a shack the first winter on the edge of 
the woods overlooking Redfields. This is all I 

28 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


know about him, except that he is a terrific worker 
and minds his own business—unless sitting on his 
doorstep in the evening and overlooking Redfields 
is not his business. Your father resents that as the 
act of a prideful enemy. He suspects Manson covets 
the remainder of Redfields,” he added significantly. 

But I made no reply to that. I went back and 
asked him some questions about father. He looked 
at me strangely, as if he also asked a question of 
me, as if he had some doubt in his mind about me 
which troubled him. I cannot tell; possibly it was 
the pallor and weariness he saw written there. At 
any rate he turned after he had started down the 
stairs. 

“Go now and get some rest. You need it,” he 
said kindly, as if he made this excuse for cowardice 
in a McPherson. 

It was then that I had gone to my room, flung 
myself upon the bed and had fallen into that deep 
sleep of exhaustion. 


29 


CHAPTER III 


Now for an hour I had been sitting on the old 
veranda wall, refusing to think of what Doctor Fos- 
berry had told me. I could not bear it. Father 
would recover, I insisted to myself. Other men sur¬ 
vived such a stroke and went on with their affairs 
for years. I could manage to pay the interest on this 
mortgage, hold the place so long as he lived, then 
let it go. I must live in New York. The scenes 
of my working mind lay there, Oliver was there, and 
I had promised to marry Oliver. That settled it. 

But nothing was settled. A strange weariness fell 
upon me, as if all this land pressed against my 
breast, living, and kin to me closer than father was 
kin. I was of it before ever I became flesh and blood. 
I should be it again after I had ceased to be flesh and 
blood. 

The night prompts us and we know things that 
we cannot know in the obvious light of day. I doubt 
if there is any such thing as superstition. What we 
call by that name is something our very recent fac¬ 
ulty of reason cannot admit, lacking proofs. But it 
is a deeper wisdom than mere knowledge, lying very 
still and ages old; things we do not learn but have 

30 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

always known. Sometimes in our dreams or in the 
dark, which is the great dream of Nature, it comes 
back to us, not in words, but that which was before 
words, a mere feeling, always convincing to us but 
not to our reason. 

Just so, I remembered now, how I had been 
startled from sleep up there in my room awhile ago, 
thinking I had been called, only to feel the presence 
of things that knew me in the darkness and silence. 
What I had heard was not a voice, but it was the 
Land, deep and mysterious, speaking to me, claim¬ 
ing me! 

The blissful beauty of the night passed away. 
These hills had fallen upon me. These stars had 
become my prison keepers. This darkness was my 
pall. This place was to be my grave. And there is 
no valor in the grave! 

“Who shall deliver me from the body of this 
death?” I whispered, flinging my hands up in a sharp 
gesture of despair. 

Then it came over me that I had quoted some sort 
of Scripture. Not in years had any words of which 
prayers are made passed my lips. What spell was 
this binding me now to awful and eternal things? 

The folds of the loose silk robe I wore glistened 
like pale green moonlight. I drew it closer about 
me, leaned back and closed my eyes; I do not know 
for how long. At last some soft sound disturbed 

31 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


me. I glanced instinctively at the windows of 
father’s room. No movement there. I stared out 
over the lawn, listening intently to this measured 
whisper of a sound, sibilant through the withered 
grass, as if the shadows were beginning to walk. 
Then I saw one appear between the two poplar trees, 
erect, moving across these other shadows and com¬ 
ing toward me. 

I held my breath with that protective gesture a 
woman has of pressing her hand to her breast lest 
her heart escape with it if she lets go this breath. 
If you are a woman and in the dark the instinctive, 
fearing nature of you is always to expect some kind 
of masculine apparition. It makes no difference how 
old or widowed or spinstered you are, subconsciously 
you are prepared to discover that “he” of life. It 
is a scandal of the feminine, from which neither 
chastity nor courage can deliver any of us. 

I perceived that this was a man approaching. 
And by the directness with which he came I knew 
that his eyes were fixed upon me, although at this 
distance I could make out no more than the blurred 
lines of an immense figure. 

After the first startled moment I relaxed. So 
many people had called during the day. This was 
some neighbor, I thought, coming to inquire about 
father. I leaned back with the moon shining full 
upon me and waited, too indifferent to do those 

32 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


things to myself a woman always does when a man 
approaches, whatever kind of man he is, if she is 
in the natural vanity of her senses. Even if I should 
be walking along Fifth Avenue, at the sight of a man 
I knew my instinct—sternly repressed—was to touch 
my hair with fussing fingers, as a bird runs a preen¬ 
ing bill through his wing feathers; or it was to ar¬ 
range some adjective of myself, such as the girdle 
round my waist, or to glance helplessly at the toes 
of my shoes lest there should be dust on them. But 
now I sat mournfully depleted of every pride, watch¬ 
ing this shadow advance, growing taller as it came 
—until suddenly it loomed before me, blotting out 
the moon, casting a deep shade over me. 

What I saw was a man who might have been the 
posthumous son of Adam. He was young, yet he 
conveyed the impression of weariness and age. 
There was no grace in this huge frame, only strength 
and endurance. His head, covered with a mass of 
dark hair, literally seemed to stand on his shoulders. 
The poise of it meant so much that was invincible, as 
if he had erected it like a monument to stand and 
withstand everything. His skin was very dark, and 
he was sublimely homely, as if he had achieved this 
homeliness, this leanness of the jaws, this wide thin¬ 
lipped mouth made for silence, this forehead 
wrinkled above sweeping brows, by some terrific ef¬ 
fort. His eyes were black, deeply sunken and far 

33 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


apart, as if he reserved a wide and cleared space 
above them for his thoughts. 

He regarded me with these eyes. And it was as 
if the night—not this one but a night somewhere in 
the remote beginning of time—looked at me. 

I do not know how it happened, but I remember 
thinking with a sort of mental gasp, “This man 
would be hard to kill! He is life, all of it, and 
terrible!” 

One may see more in a glance than can be told or 
accomplished in a lifetime. For one instant I stared 
up at him, a reeling gaze down the ages of man 
that wavered and fell before this one. There is a 
place where a woman keeps her courage, probably in 
one of the smaller dresser drawers of her mind, along 
with her spiritual handkerchiefs and prayer rituals, 
but it is never in her eye. She may flash you a look 
of love or meekness or temper and hold it long 
enough to be read, and she can die for her convic¬ 
tions, however trivial, or for her affections, however 
unworthily bestowed, without ever being able to 
brave you with a look as one man braves another 
man. I do not know why this is so, but it is, because 
more than once in my life I have tried it and failed, 
not from fear but for no other reason than that I 
am a woman. 

So now before this incredible stranger my eyes 
fell. 


34 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

Immediately I heard him say: 

“Nancy McPherson,” speaking not to me but to 
himself, in low tones, deep and smooth, as if he 
got them out of a big wind box in his chest and 
could have made them heard across mountains. 

“Yes,” I answered, giving him an interrogative 
stare, no longer than this little word, but meaning 
with a note of coolness in my voice that this was 
Miss McPherson, and who was he 4 ? He did not 
take the hint. He simply folded himself on the wall, 
well within confidential distance, stared past me and 
remained silent. 

For a moment I was conscious of the robe I wore 
wrapped about me like a sheath. I was about to lift 
one hand to my rumpled hair, then I dropped it. 

I had a sensation which I had never experienced 
before in the presence of any man—that of being 
erased, of having no feminine effect upon his con¬ 
sciousness. I had suffered a loss. He passed me 
with his eyes as if I were not there. He denied me 
some right I had to his consideration and sympathy. 

As a rule a man instinctively notices a woman 
who is in the midst of some terrible grief. He is 
attracted to her, first because of the protective feel¬ 
ing he has, you may say, for the feminine of him¬ 
self, but chiefly, I believe, because sorrow makes a 
woman soft, accessible, when she would yield neither 
to love nor pride. It is some fundamental weakness 

35 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


in her that seeks his strength. The fact that the 
hunchback Duke of Gloucester courted and won 
Anne with the insolence of a monstrous courtship, 
even as she followed the body of her murdered 
lord, the king, to its grave, may be shocking to the 
decencies we have achieved, in spite of our nature, 
but it indicates how profoundly Shakspere under¬ 
stood the frailty of the mourning nature of women 
and how daringly he could interpret it. There is 
nothing in this world so fearless and shameless as 
genius. It is the one thing which can and always 
does betray the very hidden truth of us regardless. 

In the brief moment of silence that followed be¬ 
tween us I regarded him with the wings of my mind 
spread and whirling. Hunched up on this wall he 
looked like a dusty young Enoch, who had been 
walking wearily with God across the land in seed¬ 
ing time. He suggested the big end of the Scrip¬ 
tures which were made before spiritual things be¬ 
gan, when men lived in the real presence of God 
and were not required merely to live by faith in 
Him, but in literal obedience to His will according 
to the weather, the earth and her seasons. 

The proud patience of this lean, strong face show¬ 
ing dark against the moonlight recalled to me some¬ 
thing fearful that I had read long ago. I remem¬ 
bered it, not all, but in fragments, the ancient sen¬ 
tence pronounced upon Adam: “Cursed be the 

36 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all 
the days of thy life. Thorns and thistles shall it 
bring forth to thee. ... In the sweat of thy face 
shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the 
ground; for out of it wast thou taken, for dust thou 
art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” 

I do not know how it happened, but he reminded 
me of this first divine imprecation, which has out¬ 
lasted those later, hotter Scriptures dealing, you may 
say, with an improvised torment. For of this place 
we now have our rational, cheerful doubts. He ap¬ 
peared to me like one who has been nobly cursed 
without knowing it, informed with a curious ma¬ 
jesty, who must be defeated, never by other men, 
but by the invincible elements of Nature. 

He leaned forward and braced himself with his 
long arms stretched and his huge hands resting on 
the wall. 

This slight movement broke the spell of my 
amazement. I experienced a faint resentment at the 
sight of these hands. They looked like two slaves, 
obedient to perform terrific tasks, but insensate, as 
if they had never touched anything soft nor caressed 
anything living. 

I became conscious of this outrageous silence. 
Here was a strange man, making an apparition of 
himself with no more manners than an apparition. 
I might be postscriptural—many a modern woman 

37 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


is—but he was not prehistoric. He had been born 
comparatively recently, however he looked, and 
he must know that it was the height of presumption 
to ignore a woman’s presence as he had done for at 
least two minutes. 

I made a movement indicating that I was about 
to rise and go in. 

He caught me again with his cool impersonal 
gaze. 

“Your father,” he said. “I came to ask how 
he is.” 

“We hope he is better,” I answered. 

“He will recover. Such a man does not die easily. 
He is only defeated, not slain, by this stroke.” 

“Do you know my father?” I asked. 

“Very well.” 

“You were friends?” 

“No, enemies,” he returned, as if he stated a 
fact regarding the weather or some other uncontrol¬ 
lable phenomenon of Nature. 

Veracity, uncensored and unadorned by the soft¬ 
ening language of something kinder or more cow¬ 
ardly than veracity, is the most offensive thing we 
are capable of. It is an unwarranted presumption 
against which there is no defense in polite society 
—and I belonged to polite society, very polite. 

I drew back with an intaking breath and cut him 
a look. Father deserved his enemies if ever a man 

38 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

did, but why should one of them trespass so near 
him, fallen now in the twilight between two 
worlds? 

“I admired him beyond any man I have known,” 
he went on, I felt without reference to my implied 
rebuke, but merely to say what he had to say. 

“He knew nothing of the science of living as men 
must live now. He belonged to the age of heroes. 
They never made a civilization, but they produced 
all the great poetry we have by their infernally 
sublime deeds. They were real men; they had not 
been tampered with. They had no secrets, no shame 
and no fear. Your father was like that.” 

“Yes,” I said, meaning, “Please go on!” 

“He might have held what belonged to him 
against the robber barons of his own feudal age, 
but he had no defense against the shrewder cupidity 
of a commercial world,” he concluded, standing up 
to take his leave, as if it made no difference what 
I might be going to say in reply. 

“Do you see that light?” he asked, pointing 
toward a tiny spot of effulgence on the edge of the 
Big Woods, which I had not noticed until this mo¬ 
ment. 

“It shines from the window of my cabin. If you 
need me, if anything happens, swing a lantern out 
here. I will come,” he said, turning upon his heels. 

“You are Manson!” I gasped. 

39 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


“Yes, Black Manson,” he answered, without look¬ 
ing back as he moved off. 

If you are a woman you are subject to more dif¬ 
ferent kinds of mortification than a man can possibly 
suffer. For one moment I sat confused, oppressed 
by the revulsion of feeling that swept over me. It 
was not so much that this was the man who had 
got possession of the most valuable part of Red- 
fields; it was the overwhelming appeal he had made 
to my imagination. I regretted the Scriptures and 
fine curses with which I had endowed him. I had 
been tricked by my own habit of creating imaginary 
characters out of living men and women. In fact, I 
reflected bitterly, Black Manson could not possibly 
bear the slightest resemblance to this sublime dumb 
soul of the dust which I had made of him in a flash 
of exalted fancy. He was probably some adven¬ 
turer, sick of the world he had eaten or hiding from 
some deed he had done. In any case I would not 
make signals to call him if anything happened, as he 
suggested. There was a telephone in the house, and 
neighbors nearer than this stranger. I should ask no 
favors of Black Manson. 

Still I came to my feet and stood looking the way 
he had gone. There was a road which approached 
the house coming up between the two poplar trees. 
I stood up on the wall. From the top of it I could 

40 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


see this road stretching like a bright ribbon across 
the valley below and over the bridge on Redfields 
River, on across the breast of the hills beyond where 
it swept out of sight into the Big Woods. 

I could see the tall form of Manson moving along 
this road in the moonlight, climbing the hills toward 
his cabin until he became a mere shadow that dis¬ 
solved in the distance. Then a long flare of light up 
there, startling and bright, with Manson passing 
through it. Then darkness. The door of his cabin 
closed. 

Once more I had the feeling of having seen a 
man who did not belong to mankind, but was closer 
kin to the ground, of original dust. Then I caught 
myself committing this folly, turned and stepped 
down from the wall. 

Women are not trivial, but they can never resist 
doing in secret what their impulses dictate. They 
really suffer from imagination and ideality. This 
is why they are supposed to be more spiritual than 
men. They are only more romantic. They are all 
novelists in secret, with one prospective heroine and 
any hero, even if he is a man whom they hate and 
whom they would not recognize in real life. No one 
knows this about women but another woman. For 
Manson the trader, who had no doubt purchased 
Big Woods for half its value and might in fact con- 

41 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


template acquiring what remained of Redfields, I 
felt a strong antagonism, but as the man of awful 
attributes he appealed to me. 

I would write to Oliver in the morning, I said to 
myself, much as a woman sometimes gets up when 
she is alone in her room and locks the door, even if 
it is broad daylight and no one is to be seen out¬ 
side. She locks it against her own thoughts. 


42 


PART TWO 


CHAPTER IV 

The drought which had set in before I came home 
lasted through July. The very earth seemed to 
change back to dust. The Redfields pastures on 
Redfields River became a desert covered like an old 
man’s face with a thin beard of dead grass. The 
river shrank to a tiny stream between stagnant pools. 
All day long the cattle moved up and down the bed 
of it, feeding upon the coarse swamp grass and 
crowding into these pools of slimy green water, 
where they stirred and milled like beasts in torment. 

The young corn withered in the fields. I used to 
stand sometimes during these burning days between 
the two poplar trees at the end of the lawn and 
look down at this corn. It stood rank upon rank 
like a pale famished army filling the Redfields bot¬ 
toms as far as the eye could reach, eve^ blade curled 
like a sharpened spear. The tassels, no longer opu¬ 
lent with bloom, stood up stiffly like cockades above 
the heads of a valiant host. It was fearful and 
touching, the suffering of this corn, and very signifi- 

43 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


cant of hunger and poverty to come. No country is 
so undefended as that one where the living green 
armies of the land fail. 

I had forgotten what a drought means. People 
who live in cities never do know. If the weather 
is dry and hot they leave this weather and go where 
it is not hot. In any case there is the moisture of 
hourly showers from the sprinklers in every street 
of the town. Ten thousand fans revolve to cool 
it when not a wind stirs. There are iced foods and 
iced drinks and charity funds to send the children 
to the seashore, and hospitals for everybody, how¬ 
ever poor, who sickens in this heat. The poor—even 
the very poor—are as well off as usual if they have 
money with which to buy. If they have not it is 
against the law to starve and they are fed. There 
is always an abundance of food. If the grain har¬ 
vests fail in one section grain is shipped in from 
another section. Fruits, vegetables, refrigerated 
meats are all supplied. Nobody asks where they 
come from, only the price. But far out, a thousand 
or two thousand miles from this city, there are strips 
of fertile land, sentenced by Nature to parch like 
the desert for a year or for years. There are whole 
communities that grow poor in a season. These are 
the people who literally produce their own food, 
but have no money with which to buy it. They do 
not work for wages but for a livelihood. When 

44 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

their crops fail they go bankrupt for a few dollars. 
They are sold out and move away like leaves blown 
in the wind. They get disorders from which they 
never recover. They sicken with fevers and survive 
—or they die. It makes no difference. Their 
creed is: “The Lord giveth, the Lord hath taken 
away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” So are 
they laid back into the dust from which they came. 
They are not only the meek, they are the very meek 
who do not inherit the earth. 

McPherson County passed through such a drought 
that summer. And it was not the perishing corn in 
the Redfields bottoms that oppressed me most. It 
was the awful fortitude of the people; the small 
farmers, the tenants, the everlasting very poor next 
to the land. It appeared that they were not so 
much concerned about how they should live through 
the winter to come. They were anxious about their 
small accounts with the merchants and about how 
they should pay their rents. They themselves could 
not be sold to pay these debts, but their cow might 
be sold The cow of a poor man is a sacred animal, 
no matter how lean she is. When everything else 
fails she is still his meager insurance against hunger. 

The simplicity with which they faced their prob¬ 
lems frightened me. It was a question to be decided 
by the weather, they agreed. If it rained they might 
still “pull through.” If it did not rain soon no man 

45 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


of them knew what he would do. They let it go at 
that and watched the brazen heavens. 

I also began to watch the heavens. I had grown 
soft, living so many years beyond the immediate 
reach of Providence. Whether I paid my bills at 
the end of the month in New York depended upon 
the success I had with editors and publishers. If 
one rejected a story another might take it. Some¬ 
body usually did. In any case I was already at 
work on another story. Thus my chances were 
doubled and trebled. But there is only one God, 
only one season in which a harvest can be made, on 
the land. If the rain fails to fall even upon the 
just there will be no harvest that year. Why then, 
I asked myself, did so many, many men risk this 
slender hope merely to live, and under conditions 
so harsh that the most wretched men away from the 
land will not endure them. 

The answer to this question is not rational. It is 
Scriptural. You will find it in the first Seven Days 
of History, and nowhere else. Something happened 
then which is not recorded by its proper name in 
Genesis. The priesthood of the land was created 
then. It is an “order” like any other—but the old¬ 
est. From Adam down every man in it is ordained 
with a curse, terrible and beautiful. They are 
simple men, not chosen but born to the land. They 
hope no great hopes as other men do. They are 

46 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

holden by no vision, but by a strange and awful re¬ 
lationship to their original dust. They never escape 
nor rebel, and they never grow rich by their own 
labors. They are the lowest and best class of men, 
so far removed in consciousness from everything but 
the land that they cannot be organized into unions 
or any other order for their own defense. They 
are the woeful ones who feed and enrich and bless 
mankind; the sublimely poor who starve but never 
beg. Their altars are the fields, and you will know 
them for priests of the land by their dusty garments 
and their bowed shoulders, as if with their very 
bodies they said “Thy will be done!” 

But I was too far removed from these elder Scrip¬ 
tures or any other gospels then to realize this. My 
horror of the situation in which I found myself in¬ 
creased when I understood at last that father would 
never recover, and that sometimes death is very 
tardy about claiming his victims. 

There is a man in every man, a woman in every 
woman, bound by no law, no love nor any duty, 
who is the very truth of us that we never speak—it 
is so veracious of what we really are. This one is 
the prisoner we keep, whose existence we never admit 
but whom we can neither silence nor destroy, not by 
the exercise of every virtue and every prayer care¬ 
fully prayed. To the very last he gets up and 
claims secretly his own rights, the fulfillment of his 

47 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


own desires regardless. And to the very last she 
creeps to the bars and regards you, the woman you 
must be and are in spite of her. 

“My dear,” she whispers, “you know that I am 
really you. Why sacrifice me, your very self, for 
conscience’s sake? It is not your conscience. It is 
a bondage shrewdly imposed by mankind for their 
protection against each other and against you. 
What is duty or self-sacrifice? Merely an enormous 
contribution you make to the common fund, while 
you yield that which you really crave, and which 
would satisfy me as not one of your good deeds or 
even your virtues satisfies you. They only flatter 
you in your own eyes and in the eyes of the w r orld!” 

I atoned for this outlaw of mvself with sincere 

* 

filial devotion to father. Against Doctor Fosberry’s 
advice, I dismissed the nurse. Through the hot, 
breathless days I did not leave him. The nights 
were vigils kept beside his bed. Sometimes the dark¬ 
ness and silence there were nearly unbearable. In a 
city you may be without companionship, but you 
are never really lonely. There is always some¬ 
where to go, so much to see. Here there was no¬ 
where to go but to the window of father’s room, 
nothing to see but the stars above the immense 
shadow of the night, and that small dim light like 
the palest beam that shone from the door of Black 
Manson’s house on the edge of the Big Woods. I 

48 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

had not seen him again but I remembered what he 
had said about signalling if I needed him. I thought 
of it constantly as you think of scenes in the life you 
would have and of the lines you would say but 
never do say. The biography of a woman cannot be 
written; so much of her life is purely imaginary. It 
consists of lovers she never had; of temptations she 
never knew; of revenges and powerful virtues she 
never had the chance to achieve. 

I found little comfort in Oliver’s letters, except 
that he wrote frequently; exquisite letters, filled 
with the delicate phrasing of his passion. But I 
seemed to have changed. His love no longer applied 
to me. When you have been suddenly thrust up 
against the elbows of the Almighty the fanciful woo¬ 
ing of even a brilliant man who has never felt the 
sharp pains inflicted by this Providence seems trivial 
and blasphemously inadequate. 

Meanwhile I worked indefatigably. I corrected 
the proofs of my book and urged its early publica¬ 
tion. In New York my earning capacity exceeded 
my needs, and even my extravagances. Now, I was 
afraid of this tremendous poverty which threatened 
me. Every acre of Redfields widened my fears— 
this great house, the drought and above all, father. 

He had passed into the secondary stage of con¬ 
valescence, to use Doctor Fosberry’s phrase. He 
was now the victim of an inarticulate consciousness. 

49 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


And he was concerned about something. He ap¬ 
peared to be waiting and listening. There was one 
thing he wanted to know. This asking look was 
always in his eyes when I bent over him. He would 
turn his great head slowly on the pillow, and put 
it to me again with weary insistence. He showed no 
human impatience. He simply lay, the long gray, 
gaunt shadow of whatever this was that he wanted 
to know. 

At last one day, quite unexpectedly, he recovered 
the power of speech. 

“Nancy,” he pronounced, making a great effort 
and speaking in the thick mutter of his deep voice. 

“Yes, father!”I exclaimed softly, moved by this 
change. 

“Go and look,” he went on slowly. 

“Yes, father; where?” I urged, fearful lest the 
awful silence of the past weeks should descend upon 
him again before he could finish. 

“In the southwest—see if there is a cloud, no 
bigger than a man’s hand.” His voice trailed off into 
a hoarse whisper. 

“No, dear,” I answered presently, returning from 
the window, “but the north is dark with clouds.” 

He made a gesture, implying that clouds in the 
north were false prophets. 

“The corn! The corn in the bottoms!” He 
moaned. 


50 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


Tears filled my eyes. I understood at last what 
had been troubling him, a dim horror in his clouded 
brain—this drought. It came to me with a shock 
that he did not suspect his own illness. He no 
longer existed. This drought was his consciousness, 
and the perishing corn was his vision! 

I recalled what I had long since forgotten—the 
way father used to sit bent over, with his face hidden 
in his hands during a dry season long ago, when I 
was a small child. 

“Nancy, look and tell me if you see a cloud in 
the southwest, if it is no bigger than a man’s hand,” 
he would say, as if his own eyes could no longer 
brave the brazen skies. 

I would sail forth and return presently with the 
discouraging weather report that there was no cloud 
in a proper part of the heavens. It all came back 
to me, the enveloping depression, the way the thun- 
derheads used to boil up in the east, the hot blast 
of the wind that swept out and shook them and 
parted them and left the earth desert dry. 

Now, of all his life, riven with grand deeds and 
fierce tempers, father remembered nothing—only hot 
skies during a drought, only the pallor of the fam¬ 
ished corn in the bottoms. 


51 



CHAPTER V 


A railroad divides this place from the Armstead 
plantation. There is a station on our side called 
Redfields. About it lies a wide level tract of land 
containing exactly one hundred acres. This land is 
different from the lower river bottoms, being gray 
and lighter than the red clay. Since long before I 
was born it has always been planted in cotton if it 
was planted at all. 

As the years passed a small settlement sprung up 
round Redfields station—the usual country store, 
with one corner boxed off for a post office, a cotton 
gin, a blacksmith shop and the inevitable grist mill. 

After father began to improve I sometimes went 
there, partly for the walk but chiefly to get the after¬ 
noon mail, which usually consisted of a letter from 
Oliver, newspapers and circulars addressed to Kedie 
McPherson. 

One afternoon I set out earlier than usual, partly 
because the heat had moderated. The drought con¬ 
tinued, but there was a freshness in the air as if 
rain had fallen somewhere. 

Memories are the only things we possess that do 
not change. Whatever is present is passing. You 
get a glimpse and it is gone, the day and its deeds. 

52 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


This road to Redfields station was sort of a biogra¬ 
phy of my girlhood. I had gone to school this way. 
I had visited and frolicked as a child over it. I 
had walked in the shadows of these trees as a very 
young girl with my first lover, Bruce Armstead. 
What had become of Bruce ? No one had mentioned 
him to me since my return. And now that I had 
the mind to think of it, why had not Bonnie Arm¬ 
stead been to call on me 4 ? As girls we had been in¬ 
separable. After I had gone to New York we ex¬ 
changed fervent letters for a time. Then Bonnie 
had failed to write. Years later father had written 
me that Mrs. Armstead was dead and that Angus 
was failing. The relations between father and 
Angus Armstead were peculiar. When they were 
sober they were friends, reserving toward each other 
a sort of remorseful consideration. But when they 
were not sober they became deadly enemies. And 
their periods of inebriation frequently coincided, for 
no better reason than that the one could not contend 
with the other in his rational, law-abiding senses. 
They could never agree about anything, whether it 
was a land line or a political issue, yet they were 
intermittently devoted friends. 

I was thinking about Angus, how he looked the 
evening he had stumbled in to ask about father 
shortly after I came home, a feeble, doddering old 
man whose mind was failing, when I came in sight 

53 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


of the Armstead place. It was the same old ram¬ 
bling farmhouse set back from the road between two 
spreading elm trees, and the very same red and 
white hollyhocks bloomed along the garden fence. 
Yet there was a difference—the difference that 
silence and stillness make. The door was closed. 
The curtains before the windows were drawn. No 
one was in sight. Nothing moved. There was not 
a sound in this house and garden, where I remem¬ 
bered so much motion and happy confusions. The 
way the house you live in looks sometimes may be¬ 
tray the secret which is hidden in your breast. What 
I mean is that I instinctively rejected the idea of 
entering the gate and knocking upon the closed door, 
which is what I should have been inclined to do but 
for the air of sad and secret silence which seemed 
to hang over it. 

As I came in sight of Tinkham’s store at Redfields 
the usual scene unfolded. Old Archie Winch stood 
in the doorway of his shop wearing his leather apron, 
shirtsleeves rolled up, face red and perspiring, cool¬ 
ing himself after a bout with his forge and anvil. 
Two or three disreputable-looking cars of no recog¬ 
nized motor ancestry, some barefoot boys pitching 
horseshoes, groups of farmers lounging in the shade 
of every doorway, and over all the puffing of the 
gasoline engine in the grist mill. 

54 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

Two men seated opposite one another were play¬ 
ing checkers on the porch of Tinkham’s store. Two 
others sat on the opposite side of the door, discussing 
the relative values of cowpeas. 

One was saying as I came upon the porch: “I 
always plant the whip o’ will pea!” 

Then there was merely a shifting of bodies and a 
scraping of feet as they wished me good evening, 
and one of the men looked up from his game of 
checkers to ask me how was Kedie McPherson to¬ 
day 4 ? It appeared that he was never regarded as 
merely a father. He was very old, but no one called 
him “Old Man McPherson.” Recently he had 
drifted into the past of the minds of his neighbors. 
They were beginning to refer to him biographically, 
but he still was known by his full name and would 
be long after he passed from this earth. 

Through the open door I could see Mr. Tinkham 
—in the background as usual, moving with a sort of 
Herculean deliberation among the heavier groceries 
in the rear of the store. And I could see Mrs. Tink¬ 
ham in the foreground, also as usual, puttering be¬ 
hind the notion counter. 

Tinkham had somehow acquired the title of 
“Mister.” I never knew why, but he was regarded 
as far back as I could remember as a dangerous man. 
This may have accounted for the politeness of his 

55 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


title. He was always silent and always making a 
noise moving heavy things that thumped and re¬ 
sounded, such as boxes and barrels. His face was 
very lean and brown. His mouth was puckered to a 
point. He “used” tobacco and showed that he did. 
But if a history should be written of McPherson 
County, next to father he would probably be the 
most prominent man in it. He could lead a mob or 
disperse one. He was always the silent man who 
got there first and faced the emergency, whatever 
it was. 

Mrs. Tinkham was quite the reverse. She was 
garrulous. She published all the news there was. 
She might have made a fortune with a scandal syn¬ 
dicate. She belonged brazenly to that class of 
women whose consciousness of being thoroughly re¬ 
spectable and virtuous inspires them to speak quickly 
and authoritatively about the lack of these quali¬ 
ties in others. She was a large blond woman who 
looked doubtful and was not. She wore a wig—the 
same one since I could first remember her. It was 
now merely the ravelings of a wig—the hair of it 
three shades lighter than her own. But under no 
circumstances would she be seen without this absurd 
thing on her head. That sickly fuzz of yellow hair 
represented some earlier blandishing sense she had 
of herself and had never yielded, probably because 
she was so constantly in the public eye. 

56 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


“Come in, Nancy!” she cried, glancing up as my 
shadow darkened the doorway. 

“How nice and cool you look,” she said when I 
had found my usual seat in the chair at the end of 
the counter. 

I was wearing an organdie frock, pale gray, flow¬ 
ered over with ragged robins of every hue these 
cheerful little vagrants of the sun make when they 
bloom. Two pink rosebuds dropped from my gar¬ 
den hat on either side, and the ends of the narrow 
black velvet ribbon tied round the crown hung down 
briefly behind. 

Mrs. Tinkham said she had heard that Kedie 
McPherson had had a backset. 

I replied that he continued to improve slowly. 

“You must wait for the mail to-day. The train is 
an hour late,” she informed me. 

“It is pleasant to rest after the walk from Red- 
fields house,” I answered. 

“I reckon you are glad to be back home again,” 
she went on. 

She was laying bolts of cloth on the shelves—with 
her back turned to me—so that I could not see her 
face, but I felt it—the avid curiosity. And I de¬ 
tected a note in her voice which implied a doubt of 
my gladness, but I told her “Oh, yes.” 

“It looks like rain,” she announced. 

This was her habit—to skip nimbly from one topic 

57 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


to another. I suppose it was because she did so 
many different things with her hands while she was 
talking. 

“Yes, it does!” rumbled a voice from the rear, 
where only the broad bowed back of Mr. Tinkham 
was visible behind a barricade of sacks of flour. 

Mrs. Tinkham flirted round and regarded this 
back with a spark in her eye. She was surprised. 
So was I. The male Tinkham rarely ever contrib¬ 
uted his opinion to the common fund of opinions. I 
was persuaded that only a strong conviction caused 
him to do so now. I experienced a lively hope at 
once that we really might be going to have rain. 

But Mrs. Tinkham would not have it so. She 
never agreed with her husband. 

“All signs fail in a drought!” she retorted. 

She came and sat in the remaining chair between 
the counter and the window. 

“I reckon you heard about the fight between 
Judge Tanksley and Brother Bangs yesterday,” she 
began. 

No, I had not heard. Why had they fought*? 

“Bangs is the pastor of the Methodist church at 
Cameron, you know. Sunday morning he preached 
his annual sermon on temperance. Tanksley is a 
Baptist, and I reckon he didn’t know that under 
Methodist law every pastor must preach at least one 
sermon a year on infant baptism and one on tem- 

58 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


perance. Judge Tanksley may have been worked up 
from the start, feeling that it was his business to 
charge the jury if there was a violation of the pro¬ 
hibition law, not Bangs’ business, which was just 
to preach the gospel. Anyhow, when Brother Bangs 
went so far as to say in the course of his sermon 
that it wasn’t only the unruly among us who were 
drinking whisky, he said there were public servants 
in McPherson County, sworn to enforce the law who 
were not above suspicion. And he clinched that by 
slamming his fist on the pulpit board and shouting in 
a loud voice that he, even he, had smelled liquor on 
the breath of a judge!” 

She left me in suspense at this point while she 
went back and sold Mrs. Winch five yards of 
gingham. 

Meanwhile, I could still hear old man Tom Skel¬ 
ton praising the “whip o’ will pea.” 

“It makes more hay than the common cowpea,” 
he asserted. 

His companion would not dispute this. 

“Now, you take the whip o’ will pea in a drought 
like this, what does she do?” 

He waited. The other man would not even ques¬ 
tion the gender of this great pea. 

“Why, she goes on perducin’, making hay and 
peas, when all other peas jest grunts and gives up! 
he announced triumphantly. 

59 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

I inferred that the continued silence of his com¬ 
panion indicated that he was guilty of nourishing 
some other variety of pea on his land. 

“If you’d try the whip o’ will pea, Jones—” 

I did not hear how completely Jones would in 
that case be forever divorced from all other peas, 
because Mrs. Tinkham returned and began, much as 
any other author does, where she left off. 

“Well, Judge Tanksley was sitting so near the 
front the pounding of Bangs’ fist on the book board 
jarred him. But he couldn’t do a thing. He dassent 
even get up and walk out, with every eye in the 
congregation resting on him.” She let out a chuckle 
of appreciation at this fine description, and went on: 

“The next day—that was yesterday—he met 
Brother Bangs on the street opposite the post office 
in Cameron, and he asked Bangs what he meant by 
what he said about smelling liquor on a judge’s 
breath. Bangs told him he meant what he said. 
Tanksley wanted to know which judge. 

“Then the preacher bends forward, brings his nose 
within two inches of Tanksley’s whiskers, and works 
his nose most offensively, making a sniffing sound, 
and he says as bold as brass, ‘I might have referred 
to you and told the truth.’ 

“Then they went at it so quickly that them that 
saw the fight can’t swear which one struck the first 
blow. But it took two men to pull Bangs off the 

60 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

judge,” she concluded hurriedly, as if she had sud- 
denly lost interest in this story. 

I asked if cases had been made against the com¬ 
batants, but she did not answer. She was listening 
intently to a conversation going on outside the 
window. 

The “men” lay piled in the middle of the checker¬ 
board. The game was finished, and the players were 
now leaning close together, talking in undertones. 

“He has joined.” 

“Just suits Bruce Armstead. Got a bold face, but 
must always have a cloak to hide his meanness. 
Now he’s got a sheet!” 

“Wonder if the old man knows ?” 

“Angus has lost his grip. He’s getting old; 
mind’s going.” 

“I look for something to happen before long.” 

Their voices dropped to a whisper. I could not 
be sure, but I thought I heard the name of Manson, 
as if this was a dark and dangerous name. 

I glanced again at Mrs. Tinkham. She was listen¬ 
ing, her head cocked to one side with that high, ab¬ 
sent look women have when their ears are busy. 

The two men stood up and moved off as if they 
were conscious of this eavesdropping presence and 
had deeper confidences to exchange. 

“It seems strange how the same things happen 
after every war,” Mrs. Tinkham remarked, follow- 

61 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

ing them with her eye across the road to Winch’s 
shop. 

“Yes 4 ?” I answered inquiringly. 

“The Ku-Klux Klans have started up again,” she 
answered. 

“Ku-Klux 4 ?” I repeated. 

She nodded her head ominously. 

“Last Saturday night more than a hundred of 
them rode past this store. Tinkham don’t like it. 
He says it’s a hint when they ride through a com¬ 
munity that there is somebody in it that ought not 
to be in it. But I told him they were on their 
way to Cameron. They paraded there that night. 
Then they went to the courthouse, took off those 
awful white sheets with black skull and bones sewed 
on them, flung ’em over all the benches, and set 
around eating ice cream. They eat all the ice cream 
there was in town. Then they wrapped up in their 
sheets and disappeared, riding like the wind. 
Sounds foolish, don’t it 4 ?” 

“And dangerous,” I added, my mind suddenly 
busy trying to interpret the conversation we had 
overheard. 

Then Mrs. Tinkham asked me if I had seen Bon¬ 
nie Armstead since my return to Redfields. 

I told her that I had not. I began again to think 
of Bonnie. She was a little slim thing—with pale 
blue eyes ten years ago—not pretty, not smart, but 

62 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

en & a gi n g i n a wistful sort of way. Strange how com¬ 
pletely she had passed out of my mind. 

“I should have thought Bonnie would have been 
married long ago,” I said. 

“No, she is not married,” Mrs. Tinkham an¬ 
swered, after a significant pause. Her manner im¬ 
plied that there could be no possible association in 
her mind between Bonnie and matrimony. 

“She was very attractive,” I ventured. 

Mrs. Tinkham looked the other way, meaning; 
it seemed, that she preferred to change the subject. 

“She used to have a great many love affairs. She 
was very popular,” I insisted. 

Mrs. Tinkham remained as she was, averted and 
silent, an attitude of fearful charity. 

Sometimes, and anywhere, such a silence may fol¬ 
low when the name of some woman is called, as if 
this name suddenly began to fall through this silence 
like a stone accidentally cast over the brink of a dark 
and bottomless abyss. 

I was still staring at Mrs. Tinkham and listening 
into this awful silence when she turned at the sound 
of a step outside, glanced through the window and 
whispered: 

“There she comes now!” 

I had only time to observe the lightning change in 
my companion. She became the incarnation of ma¬ 
lignant middle-aged virtue. The features in her fat 

63 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


face seemed to sharpen, as if every one of these fea¬ 
tures became a two-edged sword, drawn and ready 
to strike. 

The figure of a girl appeared in the doorway. She 
halted there dismayed, not by the coldness of Mrs. 
Tinkham’s store—she had probably grown callous to 
that—but apparently it was at the sight of me. Her 
eyes met mine. She swayed a little, braced herself 
with one hand against the door, and stood for an 
instant undecided. Then she advanced timidly, not 
toward us, but indefinitely, as if her feet had no in¬ 
structions about which way to go. 

She was distinctly a girl still, as if her years had 
not matured her so much as they had damaged her 
youth, drawn dark circles beneath her childish eyes, 
blurred the lines of her face, without hardening it, 
changed the lips until the mouth was a pale con¬ 
fession of weakness and defeat. 

She wore a dress of some light material, not 
fresh, and not becoming to her. One felt that only 
a blaze of color could have brought her out, the 
woman she was now. Still she clung dutifully to 
this plain, blue-gray frock, as if she must try to 
look modest and virtuous. 

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Tinkham,” she said, not, 
I understood, by way of omitting me, but with that 
sad permission one woman sometimes gives another 

64 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


woman to choose whether she will, or will not rec¬ 
ognize her. 

“Good evening, Bonnie,” Mrs. Tinkham returned 
indifferently. 

There are women who have a “to let” look on 
their faces, very different from the gracious giving 
animation good women have. It is the advertise¬ 
ment of vacancy and hopelessness, more poignant 
than any poverty. 

I was stricken by the piteousness of this expression 
in Bonnie Armstead’s eyes as she stood that first mo¬ 
ment perfectly still, waiting for something hideous 
that might be going to happen to her because I was 
there and could do it. 

“Bonnie Armstead!” I exclaimed, rising and 
hurrying to take both her hands in mine. 

I saw her wonder if I meant to kiss her, not wish¬ 
ing that I should. 

“I am so glad to see you again,” I cried. 

She said she was glad I had come home, and how 
was Mr. McPherson? 

I told her father was improving. Why had she 
not been over to see me ? 

She murmured some evasive answer about never 
going anywhere. 

Then she moved away, as if the length and 
breadth of all things lay between us. 

65 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

“Has the mail come*?” she asked, addressing Mrs. 
Tinkham. 

“No, it is late,” was the reply. 

Bonnie cast her eye about flutteringly, holding one 
hand close to her side. She seemed to drift aimlessly 
past the letter box of the post office on her way out. 

“Did you see that*?” Mrs. Tinkham whispered as 
she disappeared through the door. 

I had seen, but I answered, “No, what*?” 

“She comes in here every day for the mail and she 
never gets any. But every day she sidles by that 
box and drops a letter into it—as if I should not 
know her handwriting when I sort the mail, and 
the one to whom she sends these letters! If post¬ 
masters told all they knew—” 

She did not finish this ominous sentence. The 
long, hoarse shriek of a locomotive sounded in the 
distance. This was the fast express. It did not stop 
at Redfields. The mail pouch was flung off and an¬ 
other, suspended from a hook beside the track, was 
snatched into the mail car as the train passed. 

Mrs. Tinkham leaped into frenzied activity. She 
flew across the floor into the door of the post office, 
emerging at once dragging the mail pouch after her. 

“Hurry, Tinkham!” she shrieked. “You’ll 
barely have time to reach the station.” 

Mr. Tinkham did not hurry. Once each day of 
his life he passed through this scene with his wife 

66 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

and he passed leisurely. He slung the bag over his 
shoulder now and went out as usual with his long 
slow stride. 

“I declare, men are aggravating,” she grumbled. 
“Tinkham ain’t lazy. He’s just slow. He won’t 
hurry, though he knows if he fails to get the mail 
off, somebody will report him and he’ll lose his place, 
which pays fifty dollars a month; and he can’t afford 
to lose that!” 

There was a roar and another blast from the en¬ 
gine as the express shot by, leaving behind a long, 
rolling cloud of dust. Presently Mr. Tinkham 
emerged from this dust with the mail bag slung from 
his shoulder. 

“He made it!” she said, and subsided into her 
chair with a sigh of relief. 

While we were waiting for the mail to be sorted 
and put up, the people began to gather outside and 
in the doorway. 

I heard the creaking of buggy wheels and saw 
through the window the legs and hanging head of 
an old sorrel horse. 

“That’s old Tom Carpenter making his rounds. 
I reckon you remember him,” Mrs. Tinkham said. 

I did, and even the horse. 

“He’s down and out now; lives with one of his 
sons. He ain’t just right,” she said, tapping her 
forehead. “He believes the world is going to be 

67 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


destroyed by vermin. Gives a body the creeps to 
hear him talk. He rides up and down the road all 
day long. When he passes anybody he wants to 
stop and tell ’em about how fast bugs and worms are 
multiplying. Every time he gets to a house he stops 
at the gate and waits for somebody to come out so 
he can warn them. If nobody comes he drives on. 
But he never gets out of his buggy; just sets up 
there, bent, with his head turned sidewise, looking 
mournful and half scared.” 

I could hear a drooling old voice now outside. 

“What did I tell you,” he was saying, “the boll 
weevil is eating up all the cotton and the army worm 
is eating up all the corn.” 

The men began to tease and hector him. 

“When is it going to rain, Uncle Tom*?” some one 
called out. 

“I don’t know,” he returned, “but you watch what 
I tell you. It’s the worms and bugs that will turn 
everything back to nothin’. Every time a tree falls 
it’s the bore worms that bring it down. Then they 
get to work on it and grind it up. Every time a man 
dies it’s the worms that work him back to dust!” 
he chanted. 

“Where have you been to-day*?” another inter¬ 
rupted. 

“I been settin’ over in the road through Black 

68 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


Manson’s cornfield. It’s the only place I could find 
where there ain’t no vermin eatin’ the crops!” 

He went on with his plaint, but at this point his 
audience deserted him. They began to discuss Black 
Manson’s crops. 

There were no weevils in his cotton, I heard one 
man say, and no worms in his corn. The army worm 
had made its appearance in McPherson County and 
whole fields of corn had been destroyed. 

“What I can’t understand is that his crops ain’t 
suffering from the drought,” some one said. “He’ll 
make a full crop of corn.” 

“He planted it a month after we finished plant¬ 
ing. It’s young and tender. ’Tain’t too late for 
the army worm to get it yet,” a voice put in with 
unconscious hopefulness. 

“Is it true, what they are saying about Manson’s 
corn*?” I asked, turning to Mrs. Tinkham. 

She nodded her head as if she imparted mys¬ 
terious information. 

“If it were not for the cane growing so tall on 
the banks of the river you could see his corn from 
Redfield house. It’s the finest I’ve ever seen in 
those bottoms.” 

Ten minutes later I was walking slowly along 
the road, with Oliver’s letter thrust into the belt 
of my dress. As usual it was a masterpiece of love 

69 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


making, delicate and sensuous. He wanted me very 
much. It had come to this, that he could not live 
without me. When would I return to New York? 
He had noticed that I did not mention coming 
back. I might expect him at Redfields any day now. 
He must see me, and so on and so forth. Besides, 
he wanted to see Redfields. He had “always liked 
the country.” 

He would like “the country,” I thought, as one 
likes a cold bath. It is exhilarating to plunge into 
one, and a relief to get out of one. He belonged 
essentially to the apartment-house temperature of 
New York life. His mind belonged to bright 
channels no wider than Broadway. I doubt if he 
could function here. I could imagine one of 
Oliver’s pale thoughts reverberating against this 
distant horizon, and there would be no other audi¬ 
ence. It was different from the tintinnabulations of 
this idea round a circle of familiar spirits where 
each man and each woman gave it the lick of a 
laugh or the smack of a comment, as children toss 
a ball. I doubted if even Oliver could love me 
here. The frame means much to the picture. In 
New York I had been very prettily framed. Now 
I had been torn from it and rolled up into a heavy 
silence. 


70 


CHAPTER VI 


I had come by this time to a place where the road 
divided. One way of it lay straight before me to 
Redfields house. The other led through the bottoms 
across the bridge over the river. I recalled what 
I had heard about Black Manson’s corn. I had a 
sort of vindictive curiosity about this corn. I doubt 
if there was any other thought above the surface of 
my mind. 

I stood considering whether I should take this 
roundabout way home. Then I chose the road 
across the bridge, walking briskly lest I should be 
late getting home to father, whom I had left in 
the care of old Ike, the yard man. 

Men make their own destinies. There is some 
logic in the way they win or fail in the order of 
things according to their works. But I know of 
nothing more fearsome than the trivial things upon 
which the lives of women turn, not upon what they 
do or think, but a wind that closes the shutter just 
as the man passes whom she might have loved and 
married if the day had been calm and the shutter had 
remained open. It was not choosing the road which 
led to Black Manson’s cornfield that day—doing 
that simply led to my works later on—but it was 

71 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

the accident of having thrust Oliver’s letter in the 
girdle of my frock which sealed my fate as a woman. 

There was a field of millet on the land above our 
corn. Now as I approached I perceived that the mil¬ 
let was not there! I stood amazed, wondering what 
had become of it. On the previous day I had ob¬ 
served it showing against the sallow corn from the 
windows of Redfields house like a long, narrow, 
green band. 

Suddenly I recalled what I had heard at the post 
office about the appearance of the army worm and 
I understood what had happened. This army had 
levied upon the millet for its maintenance. It 
flashed across my mind that old Carpenter might not 
be so far wrong. It required more to feed an army 
of worms than a regiment of soldiers if this was a 
sample of what they could consume in two days. 
I was relieved when I reached that part of the road 
which led through the corn to see that this had been 
spared. These worms only devour corn when it is 
young and tender and mine was past that stage. 
But what then, I wondered, had become of them? 
Not one was to be seen, only the markings of their 
passage in the dust. I knew, as every one does 
who has been born and bred on the land, that they 
never turn back but go on in their gluttonous march 
straight ahead until they disappear—probably into 
some other form of vermin life. 

72 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

From the agricultural point of view I certainly 
was an innocent woman at this time, but now a 
thought came to me as I stared down the road to 
where the river divided my cornfield from Black 
Manson’s cornfield. I will not admit that this 
thought developed the wings of a wish, but it did 
take the form of a highly gratifying probability. I 
suppose, in time, one may forgive an enemy and 
become reasonably affable spiritually to any good 
that may befall him, but it takes time. At the pres¬ 
ent moment I had only time to recall that the bed of 
this river was practically dry in many places, and 
that these worms would not require pontoon bridges 
to cross into Manson’s corn. 

Nothing happened until I was within fifty yards 
of the bridge. Then I saw a curious bristling black- 
and-gold smear across the road. The dust dimmed 
it here, but as far as eye could reach down the rows 
of corn it brightened into a distinct line which was 
moving toward the river with a senseless, loathe- 
some wriggle. I had overtaken the army worm in 
regular formation! Only the dry bed of the stream 
lay between them and Manson’s corn, but I knew 
that they could never cross it. These worms cannot 
even crawl up the straight side of a deep furrow. 
But they constantly reproduce themselves into but¬ 
terflies, which, in turn, change to worms in some 
farther field. 


73 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


I thought that—merely thought it—and hoped I 
was not mistaken about this process of evolution as 
I took another look at the advance guard of vermin 
on the road which certainly would cross the bridge 
before dark. Then I lifted my skirts and started 
forward at a run on my tiptoes with sickening cour¬ 
age and landed on the bridge. 

The sight that met my eyes beyond the cane on 
the other bank of the river was amazing: A forest 
of corn, stretching low along the stream, tall, deep 
green. From every stalk hung the silks of two or 
three ears; opulent, yellow silks just beginning to 
turn pink at the ends. 

I was not so simple as to imagine that the dif¬ 
ference between this corn and mine on the other 
side of the river was either a miracle or an accident. 
I knew very well that it was due to the way Manson 
had prepared his land and cultivated his crops. He 
had plowed deep and then subsoiled, so that the 
roots of his corn reached the moisture below even 
in this drought. It came to me suddenly what fabu¬ 
lous wealth there was in this land. The life in it 
was more precious than gold and so much easier to 
be had. It came up of itself from merely the sow¬ 
ing of seeds and grew into the richest harvests, 
provided one prepared it and planted it with care 
and—yes, affection! Father, I knew, had no such 
sense of the land. All his life he had been a vandal, 

74 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

taking from it in his masterful way and giving 
nothing in return. 

I had gone back across the bridge by this time 
to look again at the ravished fields of Redfields. 
The pale corn dying in its shallow furrows re¬ 
proached me. I was some of that human life that 
had betrayed the land upon which it now was per¬ 
ishing. 

I cannot say how long I stood there, but I know 
that I passed through some travail of mind and 
spirit which united me to this land as one takes a 
vow. The poverty of these desolate fields had 
now suddenly become my poverty, and dear to me. 
Father, lying upon his bed in that silent, upper 
chamber in Redfields house, was the desert symbol 
of what had happened to this land. He was a part 
of it. And I alone was the life of it. The debts, 
the incredible difficulties that faced me, were noth¬ 
ing to the antagonism I felt toward Black Manson. 
This was not enmity; it was rather the matching 
of some strange new force in me against the strength 
of this man and his cupidity. I no longer feared 
him. I was exalted, immensely superior to him. I 
foreordained myself to the task of crushing him— 
it is a feminine word, crush! Providence, the 
weather, might or might not help; that made no dif¬ 
ference. Manson should never own another foot of 
Redfields plantation! 


75 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

This resolution was directly to the point, for I 
had learned, through Doctor Fosberry, that when 
Black Manson bought the Big Woods two years 
before this time he had also purchased the mort¬ 
gage father had previously made to cover a rela¬ 
tively small loan which he had obtained from the 
bank. This loan would fall due in another year. 

But I did not depress myself now with the ques¬ 
tion of how I should raise this money. I felt sud¬ 
denly entirely capable of doing so. It was, you may 
say, a sublime feat of the imagination or a foolish 
one. The effect was the same in either case. It re¬ 
stored me to my birthright. 

It is one thing to be distinguished for having 
written a book or even a dozen books. I now had 
some experience with the levity of such fame—but 
it is a different thing to be within your own con¬ 
sciousness a great man or a great woman for having 
accomplished something natural and honorable in 
the eternal order of things. Looking back now, I 
know that out of the anguished ecstasy of that hour 
I became potentially a great woman. I felt like a 
promise made to this land. Tears filled my eyes. I 
saw the hills through these tears remember me. I 
felt the breath of standing trees blow across my face. 

At this moment the tread of a heavy foot sounded 
on the bridge behind me. I turned and beheld Black 
Manson. 


76 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


I suppose the exaltation I had just experienced 
was something similar to “conversion,” which is 
always spiritual but not always religious. Now, 
beneath the cool darkness of this man’s eyes, I be¬ 
came once more merely the woman of myself, 
flushed with embarrassment, conscious of the tears 
on my cheeks. The sensation was decidedly one of 
deflation. 


77 











PART THREE 


CHAPTER VII 

Manson halted so abruptly that his long slat¬ 
ternly frame swung forward for the next step be¬ 
fore he steadied himself and stood regarding me 
as if I were an announcement that he was not ex¬ 
pecting. 

One may receive impressions so hurriedly and 
under conditions so confusing that they are like 
negatives which memory develops afterwards with 
perfect distinctness and considerable attention to 
details. At this moment I was conscious only of 
being embarrassed, of having been detected in the 
very act of planning enmity and adversity to this 
man. But later when I recalled this scene I realized 
that I had been a sort of motion-picture camera on 
my end of the bridge taking a whole reel of my 
own impressions of Black Manson. 

It is the instinct of retaliation in all of us when 
we have suffered some sensation diminishing to our 
pride to reach out with the sword of a thought and 
cut off enough cubits from the stature of the of¬ 
fending party to even matters up. Many a great 

79 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


man has had his head bitten off by another kind 
of man without suspecting his decapitation or the 
bitter satisfaction it afforded the other fellow. 
Even so, in this brief moment during which we stood 
mutually detecting each other, I dealt Manson sev¬ 
eral critical blows. In the first place, I perceived 
that he was not the tremendous personality he ap¬ 
peared to be on that night a month since when he 
came striding toward me across the fallen shadows 
on Redfields lawn. Here in the daylight he lacked 
the ancient and mysterious attributes with which 
my imagination had invested him. He was modern 
and apparent. He had evidently submitted to civi¬ 
lization, which somehow one feels is far inferior to 
the atmosphere created in Genesis by the men who 
moved so majestically and simply through this 
period that their whole tremendous lives might be 
recorded in one brief verse of Scriptures. This was 
no dusty young Enoch! This was a well-groomed 
man in the coarse garb of a laborer. He was so re¬ 
cently shaved that the skin of his face was still 
smoothly pink from the razor. The dew of a bath 
glistened on his well-brushed hair. His great hands 
were tanned and bearded, but the finger nails 
glistened white and as evenly filed as if he had 
just returned from the manicurist. 

I took all this in at a glance and had only time 
to decide that no man born and bred to the land 

80 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

could have acquired habits of furbishing himself up 
merely to walk in his fields on a week day. 

“Good afternoon,” he said. 

“Good afternoon, Mr. Manson,” I returned. 

“Were you coming or going he asked in a tone 
which implied that he would conduct himself ac¬ 
cordingly. 

“Coming,” I answered, obliged to drop my eyes, 
not because this was a lie, but because I was a 
woman, a fact clearly but coolly defined in his gaze. 

It always imparts feelings of personal defeat to 
be and to know that you never can be anything but 
a woman in the eyes of a man no matter what you 
may do over and beyond being one. I longed to 
turn my back upon him, walk calmly and majesti¬ 
cally away as we do from something elementally 
offensive. What I really did was to advance. 

“I wanted to see your corn,” I explained non¬ 
chalantly. 

He hesitated, then turned back with me, moved, 
I was sure, by no politeness, but by his vanity as a 
husbandman. 

“It is very fine,” I said, surveying this field again. 

“Yes,” he agreed, looking back over the bridge as 
if now he might continue his journey. 

But I sat down on the low stone buttress of the 
bridge like a guest who is determined to be welcome. 

By that serpent of divination which is sometimes 

81 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


what a woman’s mind is I was certain that he did 
not know the army worm was already in Redfields 
bottom; much less did he suspect that they would 
be over this bridge before sundown—not all of 
them, but enough I reckoned to produce a power¬ 
ful military nation of worms in his corn before the 
dawn of another day. 

We may be the sons of God, as it is written. I 
do not know. But nothing is said anywhere about 
the daughters of God. I have sometimes feared in 
my sadder moments that women are post-Scriptural. 
In any case the best of us do often work at venge¬ 
ance with the loyalty of saints even while we figure 
in all the sweet fairness of daughters. I was de¬ 
termined that Black Manson should not cross this 
bridge. I had become a friendly neutral to that 
wriggling army in the dust back there. 

“You have escaped the army worm,” I said in 
an affirmative tone, wishing to make sure of his 
ignorance. 

“Yes, we both have,” he agreed. 

“My corn is too tough now to be damaged by 
them.” 

“Well, they would make short work of mine at 
this stage if they were here, but they are not,” he 
answered serenely. 

“You have only to fear a flood now,” I suggested. 

“After a protracted drought, yes,” he admitted. 

82 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

“I have seen these bottoms covered with water 
from hills to hills in August, 5 ’ I remarked as if this 
were merely a memory, not a hope. 

“But the flood must begin on your side , 55 he re¬ 
turned, stretching a long arm and pointing to a 
sharp bend in the river which was in fact a sort of 
dam that must throw the water on my land first. 

“I count on that and the deep channel of the 
river between us to break the force of a flood if 
it comes , 55 he explained coolly. 

I felt better about counting on the worms in view 
of this frank admission. 

He was standing with his back to me, his head 
lifted pridefully, still regarding his corn. 

“Ever think of this, that the word 'corn 5 is always 
used to denote plenty in the Scriptures ? 55 he asked 
without so much as a glance in my direction. 

I made no reply. A woman never likes the back 
of a man, especially when he is speaking to her. 
We all feel like magnets to the masculine eye. It 
is our nature to be seen when we are present. Seated 
there behind him in all the pinkness and whiteness 
of myself, with my organdie skirts spread, my 
nice feet neatly crossed, and garnished with the 
rosebuds drooping from the broad brim of my hat, 
I was simply the blank cartridge of femininity. 
Flushed and unintelligibly angry I shot the invec¬ 
tive of a look at his back. I was this opulent and 

83 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

plentiful thing, a woman in the prime of her loveli¬ 
ness; but he made me feel like one of Joseph’s elder 
brethren earlier in the famine season which finally 
drove all these brethren down into Egypt to beg 
for corn. I resolved never to beg, borrow or buy 
corn from Black Manson. All this because of his 
back, not on account of his boastful Scriptural ref¬ 
erence. We do not know how vain we are until our 
vanity has been wounded. 

Apparently he did not miss my part of the con¬ 
versation which was not being said. He began to 
stride back and forth, speaking as people do who 
have the time and silence in which to think. I was 
obliged to listen, although I doubt if my inattention 
would have mattered. My impression was that this 
might be a habit with him and that now he was 
probably repeating what he had already frequently 
said to himself as an appreciative audience. 

“It is not enough to own land. That may mean 
merely enslaving land,” he was saying. “The chief 
thing is to learn the mind and will of the soil. 
Otherwise you are simply a foreigner. We concoct 
fertilizers because we do not study the psychology 
of the land. It has its varying talents and tempera¬ 
ment developed far more consistently than we have. 
Why not 4 ?” he demanded, halting to put this ques¬ 
tion squarely to me. “We are the products from it 
no less than this corn 4 ?” 


84 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


I thought this was the crudest creed of pantheism 
I had ever heard, but I did not say so. I was not 
at the moment on speaking terms with him. I re¬ 
mained the prim portrait of myself. I shot past 
him with a thought about how this scene would 
end. I could not remain here guarding this bridge. 
If I withdrew he would surely cross it and discover 
that vermin army bent upon devouring his corn. He 
was capable of destroying the bridge to check their 
advance. 

“The land, no less than man, is subject to en¬ 
vironment. It develops character and qualities ac¬ 
cording to conditions, as we do,” he was saying. 

“You see that sloping hill he went on, waving 
his hand at a wide cottonfield above the corn. 

I stared at it, omitting him in the passing of my 
eye. 

“Originally the soil was the same as this,” thrust¬ 
ing the toe of his shoe in the rich black dust. “On 
the level it would have produced the same kind of 
crops. But it is not on the level. Therefore its 
reaction to the sun and the seasons is different—so 
different that it will not produce good corn any 
more than these bottoms will make good cotton. 
The soil on that hill is now feminine, volatile, 
whereas this below is heavy and strong, more life 
and substance in it,” he concluded. 

I did not relish having my gender applied to the 

85 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


flimsy, ruffle-producing earth of a washed-down cot- 
tonfield. Besides I was bored, as one always is 
when somebody discusses any subject in a manner 
alien or indifferent to one’s own personal presence. 
I decided that Manson’s egotism surpassed Oliver 
Winchell's powers of negation. The difference was 
that in the bottomless pit of his innocuous desuetude 
Oliver was always aware of me. He clung to me 
as a drowning man clings by his eyes to a fair and 
stately soil on the bright horizon. This may be the 
reason why so many women marry men far inferior 
to them. These men, conscious of their weakness, 
think with a keener, despairing admiration of us. It 
is the strongest appeal not only to our vanity but 
to our compassion. 

Black Manson was no such man. He would 
never be to any woman the eloquent, faint-hearted 
lover Oliver was to me. I doubted if even his rela¬ 
tions to Providence were prayerful. Figuratively 
speaking, he was the kind of man who might refer 
to God as his biographer, not his Creator. Such 
men may be great characters, but they are dull. 
You never invite one of them to a dinner party 
except for the honor of showing yourself as one of 
the small letters in the human alphabet who may 
come next to this highly embossed Capital at your 
own table. They lack or they have lost the touch¬ 
ing sprightliness, that gentle eloquence of comrade- 

86 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


ship. First and last I had known many such men. 
in New York, celebrated persons who were of¬ 
fensively unconscious of being mere men. 

I will not claim that I thought so clearly at the 
time, but I remember looking at Manson standing 
a short distance from me with his hands folded be¬ 
hind him, ogling his corn as if this corn was ten 
thousand personal pronouns of himself. And I dis¬ 
tinctly remember making up my mind there behind 
his magnificent back never to marry him. Most 
men would be astonished to learn how many women 
have refused them in the same manner. It is not 
necessary to propose marriage in order to be re¬ 
jected by a woman. She can do it with every kind 
of satisfaction, even if you scarcely know her and 
never entertained the remotest idea of flattering her 
with your attentions. 

The road across the bridge forked above Man- 
son’s cornfield. One way led directly to his cabin, 
the other was from this point the shorter way to 
Redfields station. I thought of that now as a con¬ 
venient exit from this situation. The afternoon was 
drifting brightly towards sundown, but the sky had 
been overcast in the southwest since noon and the 
muttering thunder rumbled nearer. I slipped from 
the buttress of the bridge, fluffed my skirts and as¬ 
sumed an active expression. 

“We may be going to have rain at last,” I said. 

87 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


“They are getting a flood of it in the hills now,” 
he answered. 

“Why do you think so? Neither clouds nor 
thunder mean anything in this drought,” I an¬ 
swered. 

“But that does,” he said, indicating the channel 
of the river. 

I stared, astonished at a slow, slimy stream of 
yellow water slipping past. 

“When did it begin?” I exclaimed. “There was 
only a green pool here a while ago.” 

“Just begun—by the drift it is bringing down,” 
he answered. 

“But it is rising,” I said, as the water began to 
come in waves which did not fall. 

“May be a roaring flood in a few minutes,” he 
said. 

He meant to stay there, I inferred, to watch the 
river rise. 

“You were on your way to Tinkham’s store just 
now, weren’t you?” I asked after a pause. 

“Yes,” he answered absently, with his eyes still 
on the rising water. 

“So am I,” I said. 

He did not hear this invitation. 

“We may as well go along together,” I suggested, 
casting a look along the way I meant to go. 

88 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

He faced about and gave me a look. For the 
first time, he really saw me; forgot the corn and 
the flowing river, I mean, and put his mind on me. 
His gaze was not interrogative but studious, as a 
man’s eye is sometimes when he has had practice 
reading the foreign language in which every woman 
is written, I may have flushed slightly, not know¬ 
ing which lexicon he might be using. 

We started off on this road in the deep shadows 
of the corn. I was no longer the dangerous person 
I had been the moment before. What I planned 
had been accomplished. I felt amiable and inno¬ 
cent, secretly % amused, conscious of my companion’s 
confused attention. The sun was still shining low 
in the west. The summer air was filled with the 
myriad sounds Nature makes when she sings to her¬ 
self. I bent to pick a wild primrose and lingered 
long enough to draw it carelessly through the lace 
on my breast. Meanwhile I talked to his silence. I 
was feeling more nearly myself than I had at any 
time since my return to Redfields. Personally speak¬ 
ing, man had always been my element. I asked him 
if he had ever been interested in the opera. He said 
no. He liked simple music, but when it became 
complex or magnificent it disturbed him. I men¬ 
tioned a popular novel. Had he seen this book^ 
No, he did not read fiction. 

89 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


“It is a waste of time,” he said. 

“So is life then, for that is the great fiction,” I 
shot back with a laugh. 

I thought he liked the laugh but not what I had 
said. I came a furlong nearer with my next sally. 

“Don’t you find life dull on the farm after living 
in cities?” I asked innocently. 

“Why do you think I have lived in cities?” he 
evaded. 

“I do not think; I know that you have,” I re¬ 
torted, smiling not at him but straight ahead. 

“I was born on a farm”—after a pause meaning 
that this was enough said. 

But I went on talking as you shout to timid 
people on the shore to come in if the water is fine. 
It was mere feminine splashing done to convict him 
of his dullness. 

We had come half the distance through the corn 
when I realized that I no longer held his attention 
and that unconsciously I had quickened my pace to 
keep step with him because he was walking now 
with a long, swift stride, his eyes wide with excite¬ 
ment. 

Then we both halted, held by a strange prescience 
of danger. 

Never before have I known what perfect silence 
and stillness meant. Literally there were no 
sounds; not a cricket chirruped, not a leaf stirred. 

90 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


The rustling corn stood still. The very trees seemed 
to stand and listen. It was as if the whole of 
Nature held her breath and waited. 

I was afraid to look behind me—it was like that. 
But I saw Manson crouch, with his eyes lifted as if 
something horrible was about to pass over us. 

Toward the south the whole heavens were in a 
turmoil. Clouds rolled above clouds, like huge 
black curtains streaked with flames blown by a 
terrific wind far over our heads. At the same mo¬ 
ment a curious black spindle appeared in the north¬ 
west, whirling with incredible velocity. The sun 
changed to a smoking ball of fire. For one instant 
the Big Woods, these fields about us, were envel¬ 
oped in a strange emerald light. Then darkness, 
filled with a terrific roar, as if presently all the 
stars in the elements would be passing by in this 
blue darkness. Yet not a leaf stirred, not a blade of 
corn. Manson changed to a gray shadow beside 
me. I clung to him and screamed. 

I felt him lay hold of me, lift me bodily from 
the ground and fling me face downwards between 
the rows of corn. But not before I saw trees leap 
from the forest and spin like great brooms in a 
whirlwind above Big Woods. 

Then it came with a deafening roar, the scream¬ 
ing, bellowing forest, terrible crashing sounds as if 
great things had fallen. And through it all keener 

91 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

whistling sounds, as if little winds blew in reeds 
through this hurricane. 

The corn lay down above me with the rending 
and splitting of every silken blade. I felt it strug¬ 
gling over me as if it were being sucked up by the 
roots. My own breath was drawn from me and 
the weight of the wind lay upon me. 

I remember my death in this horror, and knew 
no more until I lay in a gentle rain, with Black 
Manson bending above me. 

I had one look at him and closed my eyes. His 
clothes were dripping wet and torn to shreds. His 
face was streaked with mud. Blood flowed from a 
long wound across his forehead. 

“It is all over,” I heard him say. 

“Yes, what killed us 4 ?” I whispered, only faintly 
astonished that our dust could still speak. 

I felt very quiet and peaceful. Death is un¬ 
doubtedly a great relief from responsibility. Ages 
seemed to pass before I heard him say: 

“You are all right; only stunned.” 

I heard him and agreed in silence. I felt shriven, 
perfectly innocent, incapable of animosity or any 
of the purposes that animate us in life. I recall 
the sensation vividly because it is the only moment 
of unqualified peace I have ever known. 

More ages passed. Then I felt him seize me 
roughly by the shoulders and shake me. My only 

92 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

thought was that this was like him—to shake me. 
I should have preferred to die with Oliver! Oliver 
had a mind for being dead. He would have lain 
quietly like a gentleman in his dust! 

“Cyclone!” came a shout close to my ear. 

This fearful announcement restored me to my 
senses. I began to tremble violently. Tears flowed 
from beneath my eyelids. 

“Good thing it missed us!” 

“But it didn’t. It came over me. It remained 
there!” I sobbed. 

“No, it passed a quarter of a mile away,” still 
shouting with his lips close to my ear. 

“You only got a good thrashing under the corn. 
Saved your life, at that!” 

I continued to sob, feeling the need of this relief. 

“Come, let me help you up!” he insisted after a 
pause. 

“Mr. Manson, please go away!” I moaned 
faintly. 

“I can’t leave you here,” he answered gruffly. 

I sat up immediately and gave him a look. What 
I meant was that no gentleman would use this tone 
of voice to a woman beaten down by a cyclone. It 
is very difficult to satisfy the senseless demand of 
mere feelings. I suppose I should have been still 
more indignant if he had taken me at my word and 
gone away. At the same time I suffered as much 

93 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


from embarrassment as from shock and indigna¬ 
tion. If some one sees you at your worst and you 
do not know it, this is an immense saving of your 
vanity. I had to face Manson bereaved of every 
charm as he drew me from this mud to my feet. 
My flimsy summer frock was a rag that clung to 
me despairingly. My hat was gone forever. My 
hair had become involved in this hurricane of wind 
and rain. It streamed over my shoulders, wet and 
wildly crinkled. 

“We may be obliged to go round by Redfields 
station; I think the river is out of banks,” he said. 

“No, I must get home the nearest way,” I an¬ 
swered, hurrying back towards the bridge. 

“If we can,” he put in, holding steadily to my 
arm. 

“The road is elevated above the field; I can make 
it,” I said. 

I was thinking only of father, of what might 
have happened to Redfields house. 

“The flood will not last long enough to damage 
anything. I doubt if it gets out much on my side,” 
I heard him say. 

He was thinking of his corn, which was down, the 
blades split to ribbons. 

We were nearing the bridge. I could see the 
yellow water flowing across my land from the bend 
in the river. But as Manson had predicted earlier 

94 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


in the afternoon, the deep channel here broke the 
force of the water. It did not reach twenty feet 
beyond the bank into his corn. I saw all this at a 
glance. 

Then Manson halted, still holding to my arm. 
He made a sound, something between a growl and 
an imprecation. He stood a trifle bent, staring at 
what had seemed drift until we reached the edge of 
the water; in fact, it was a wriggling mass of worms. 
Every stick and leaf on the bosom of this flood was 
covered with them. Millions of them were crawl¬ 
ing from the mud on to the bent stalks of corn. 

I took what was meant to be a stolen glance at 
Manson and found myself in the full glare of his 
gaze. His eyes were filled with accusative amaze¬ 
ment. They seemed to blow upon me like an icy 
wind out of the dark. I knew nothing of his history 
or previous condition at this time, but afterwards I 
remembered this look, imperative and contemptuous, 
with which he regarded me. It was the same ex¬ 
pression, I imagine, with which a Wall Street bull 
might have regarded some little curb-cat speculator 
in the street below who by accident had momen¬ 
tarily messed up his market. 

“You knew that they were over there!” he said, 
letting go my arm as if he expelled me from him. 

So much had happened in the hour since I had 
wished this calamity upon him—merely wished it, 

95 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


you understand—that it was with an effort that I 
recovered my cheerful sense of guilt in regard to 
these worms. 

“Yes,” I admitted, lifting my chin at him. 

“But when we were talking about the army worm 
a while ago you said they were not in these bottoms.” 

“No, you said that; I merely permitted you to 
enjoy the conceit of your ignorance,” I retorted. 

“But why*? What were you expecting to gain?” 
he demanded in an even voice, as if the incident of 
the worms had passed and he was now interested in 
the curb-cat speculator in worms. 

“Because this is not your land. It is mine! The 
Big Woods, all of it is mine,” I exclaimed, includ¬ 
ing the whole gray horizon in my sweeping gesture. 

“You obtained it from a broken old man. You 
took advantage of his simplicity and his necessity. 
The price you paid was nothing compared with the 
value you received,” I cried. 

“And you think you will get the remainder of 
Redfields,” I went on, “but you never shall have it! 

“Now you understand. I don’t care what hap¬ 
pens to you or to your corn. It is really my corn!” 
I finished, accompanying this finish with a blazing 
look of wrathful contempt, feeling it emanate from 
me like proud curses. 

His retort was silence and a glint, a faint crinkling 

96 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


of the lines about his eyes. It was the amused look 
a man casts upon an angry woman. 

I was still brave, but spent. Tears filled my eyes. 
I began to tremble violently. 

“I think you had better hurry home now and put 
on some dry clothes,” he remarked coolly after a 
pause. The implication was that this was much 
more important than what I had been saying. 

There are ways and ways for a man to defeat a 
woman. Even if he does not take the trouble to 
do it, her own nature will do it. If I had not made 
the cut of a last look at him the tears might not 
have escaped and flowed down my cheeks like a con¬ 
tribution to him, and I should have been spared the 
lightning humor of his smile at my expense. As 
it was, in the glare of this grin I had to catch up 
my drenched skirts and step forward into the shal¬ 
low water. This was deeper on the other side of 
the bridge, but I held myself valiantly, taking it 
with a fine stride. If you are in full retreat the best 
thing you can do is to assume the air of advancing 
in the other direction. It is possible then to appear 
victorious from the rear. 


97 


CHAPTER VIII 


A litter of boughs blown in the fierce wind cov¬ 
ered the lawn about Redfields house. Two of the 
old-fashioned latticed blinds hung by one hinge 
from the windows on the north side. This was the 
extent of the damage done by the storm. 

At the sound of my step in the hall Ike came 
shuffling down the stairs from father’s room to 
meet me. 

“My Lord, Miss Nancy, I have been skeert to 
death about you!” he exclaimed. 

“How is father 4 ?” I asked breathlessly. 

“He is all right. He was sleepin’ sound when de 
haricane struck up here, and he wa’n’t more’n wake 
good before hit was gone,” he explained. 

“Hit was the rain dat stirred him up. He ain’t 
missed you yit, but he’s worryin’ about de flood in 
de bottoms,” he went on, following me up the stairs. 

“Whar was you when it hit you 4 ?” he wanted to 
know. 

“I was looking at the corn in the bottoms,” I 
answered briefly. 

I sent him back to father while I changed. Then 
I went in there—to find him propped up on his 
pillows with a sharpened look on his old gray face. 

98 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

“Nancy,” he greeted me thickly, “I’m sick.” 

“Yes, dear, but you are much better.” 

“It was the flood. I went down there in the bot¬ 
toms a while ago. The hay shed and the cane mill 
are gone, washed away, and all the corn is down in 
the mud,” he groaned. 

He went on about this. The corn would rot in 
the mud before he could put the teams and wagons 
in there to get it out. 

This, he explained to me, was how he had got the 
cold. He had been in the bottoms all day trying to 
save his corn. 

Then I understood. This storm had freshened 
him. It had blown him, so to speak, out of the dim 
shadows of half-consciousness. But he had landed 
fifteen years back in time. The flood he was now 
discussing actually did come then, taking away the 
hay shed and the cane mill. And father had been 
laid by the heels in bed for weeks with pneumonia, 
due to exposure, when he had spent the freezing 
October days that followed trying to save his corn. 

From this time forward he wandered about in 
his years like a tired old sheep. But by some mag¬ 
nificently protecting instinct he would not spend 
one day in his present life. He would be away 
upon the mountain of his past years, dragging the 
shadows of his deeds after him. He improved rap¬ 
idly now. Presently he was on his feet and shortly 

99 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


he was downstairs on the veranda. But he insisted 
upon wearing a piece of red flannel on his chest. 
And when there was a visitor he would show it, tak¬ 
ing a long time to unbutton his shirt to prove that 
he had the thing on him. In no other way could he 
account for his feebleness. He was still recovering 
from that spell of pneumonia, he wanted you to 
know. He expected, however, to be well pres¬ 
ently. This became a sort of deceit with him long 
after he yielded privately to invalidism, a way he 
had of keeping up his front to the neighbors. 

The people who live next to the land suffer with¬ 
out knowing that they do from the awful monotony 
of life. They are not creative; they are only pro¬ 
ductive. They live in the midst of a great epic, 
and they have no imagination. A storm or a held 
of wheat never inspired a farmer to write a poem. 
What he thinks about is how much the storm has 
damaged his land or whether he will have good 
weather for the harvesting of his wheat. The land 
and the sky hold him in bondage. Nothing can 
happen to him except daylight and darkness. His 
only relaxation is the unconsciousness of sleep. Or 
the barking of a dog may awaken him and he gets 
a little quickening of his faculties merely by won¬ 
dering who is passing in the night. Or he has the 
suspense of waiting for the weather to change. Or 

100 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

he may get his hay in by the skin of his teeth before 
it does change. Or, he may take a tumor from his 
mule’s neck and sell this mule for a good price be¬ 
fore the growth returns. Such little diversions help, 
but they do not last. It is the monotony that lasts. 
While he is stepping this way and that to turn his 
little trick, the land is really his master and will 
require the same labor. His wife is cooking the 
same kind of supper for him that she always cooks, 
and he will have the same chipped plate from which 
to eat it. He may run amuck and change his scenes 
by getting drunk. And she must, when the hour of 
her travail comes. The weary mate of this man is 
always overworked. She may have more children 
than she can take care of, but the advent of a brand- 
new infant seems to refresh her. There is a pathetic 
glow about her, a look of poignant happiness in her 
faded eyes. It is terrible when you think about it— 
which she never does—and it gives one a fear of 
the awful mercilessness of Nature. She covers her 
processes with romanticism and every illusion. And 
all eyes are holden so that we see her works but 
never fear the cost of her methods until we are 
forced to pay for them. Even then, you under¬ 
stand, there is that look of poignant happiness in 
the eyes of mothers who pay and pay again and 
add constantly to the burden which finally ends 
with the end of their lives. No wonder faith in 

101 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

immortal life is so much stronger next to the land 
than it is next to the templed ceilings of magnificent 
cathedrals in the cities. There worship is a sort of 
esthetic gratification of the spiritual faculties, but 
here faith in eternal life is the only refuge from the 
weather and poverty of this one. 

The long drought added to the desperate dullness 
of life among the people round Redfields that sum¬ 
mer. Nothing happened to change our thoughts 
from the one thought of the burning fields. Mrs. 
Tinkham was a sort of backhanded godsend during 
this period. She kept every little wisp of news 
stirring. She had practice and considerable skill 
for embellishing facts. And like most gossips she 
was charitable. I never knew her to say to a man’s 
face what she would say to his back. She was that 
considerate of his feelings, even when she had no 
consideration for his reputation. She could not 
bear to see her victim wince when she told of some 
deed he had committed which was morally fore¬ 
shortened. But she was known and feared for her 
tongue. The manner of all men to her was respect¬ 
ful and soothing. The manner of all women to her 
was coldly polite. The reason, I suppose, was that 
very few of them had a “past,” while most men 
achieve one before they do anything else, poor souls. 

So Mrs. Tinkham performed a double service that 
summer in her far from humble way. She acted as 

102 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


a sharp human stimulant. We condemned her and 
craved her works. She always had something to tell 
about a neighbor that the rest of us wanted to know. 
At the same time she exercised quite without effort 
more moral influence than the law or the preachers 
in this community. When she overtook a man in 
a fault—and she was always fox hunting for every¬ 
body’s swiftest, most private fault—she did not 
pray for him in her closet nor rebuke him in secret: 
she rewarded him openly for this transgression. She 
arrested not him but his character. She preferred 
the rumor against him, tried him and sentenced him 
according to her lights, which were very strong 
lights, morally speaking. 

I do not think the art of the gossip receives due 
appreciation. It is marvelous. Mrs. Tinkham, for 
example, could relate a trivial incident about the 
most insignificant person in such a way as to excite 
and hold your interest. And she used no tricks of 
the dramatist to do it. She told her story and left 
you to draw your own picture of how he looked, 
which you instinctively did. The best writers of 
fiction never achieve so much. They work out a 
“speaking” likeness of the hero at the start. Mrs. 
Tinkham never did. She would begin with some 
such question as this: 

“I suppose you heard about the meeting at Mount 
Pleasant last night 


103 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


This was to catch your eye and your attention. 
And you would answer, regarding her hungrily, that 
you had not heard of this meeting. 

“Well, old Davy Dyer—he’s a deacon, you know 
—invited all Christian people to meet him at the 
church at sundown yesterday afternoon to pray for 
rain. And he wanted every man and woman of ’em 
to bring his umbrella as an 'act of faith.’ ” 

“Did they go?” I asked. 

“Yes, quite a sprinkling went.” 

“Did they take their umbrellas*?” 

“Well, now that’s right smart to ask, you know. 
If it didn’t rain the joke would be on them. I don’t 
know about the Almighty, but folks will laugh if 
you make a fool of yourself. No, nobody didn’t 
take one but old Davy. He did—that old pot¬ 
bellied one he’s been carrying for years.” 

“And nothing happened 4 ?” 

“It didn’t rain. You know what a dry hot night 
last night was. But they say the old man fairly 
shook the rafters with his prayers. And finally 
Polly Carpenter got happy and shouted. That’s 
all that happened.” 

But I could see old David, bent, with his long 
white whiskers, his pale blue eyes, his little apos¬ 
trophe nose, going along the road to this church 
with his pot-bellied umbrella. I could see the curi¬ 
ous crowd gathering. It was now many a year since 

104 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

I had heard any but the most studied and finished 
praying in a church, but I could see this old bleached 
rain crow of a man leading in prayer, his face the 
one face to be seen in the dim light of the smoking 
lamps, every other head bowed. I could hear old 
David’s voice growing louder until it became a wail 
for help. I could hear the groaning amens, the snif¬ 
fling of the women, see the wide eyes of some young 
child sitting beside its mother perfectly still, listen¬ 
ing, watching this performance until its nerves broke 
beneath the thunder of old David’s invocations. 
Then the joining of the child’s terrified crying with 
the hoarse notes of David’s prayer. And finally 
the little bobbing gray head of Mrs. Carpenter, her 
bony hands raised, she smacking them together and 
murmuring in a whisper just below this silence, 
“Oh, blessed Jesus!” I remembered how gently 
and discreetly she used to shout when I was a girl 
sitting somewhere in this church during a revival. 

I was thinking about that and picturing to my¬ 
self how these people must have looked coming out 
of the dark church into the dust-dry night after 
they had prayed, David with his umbrella, the 
others carrying no such testimonial of their faith. 
With them it was an experiment; with him it was 
a challenge to the God of all the heavens humbly 
made, but a challenge nevertheless. I could see 
them filing off this way and that through the moon- 

105 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


lit night to their homes, and I could see David hoist 
his hat, cock his head to one side and cast a long 
look at the cool, clear sky, where no cloud hid a 
single star, then start off feebly down the hill, bent 
by the years of immortal faith in his Lord. I could 
almost hear the tinkle of a bell, sounding sweet and 
faint as this old bellwether saint disappeared in the 
darkness. 

I was thinking in a confused way along these 
lines, being unused to spiritual reflections, when 
Mrs. Tinkham came and sat down beside me. 

“I reckon you heard about Milly Harper,” she 
said. 

I had not heard. She told me. Milly was Thad 
Harper’s wife. They had been married nine years. 
In that time Milly had become the mother of six 
children, and Thad had paid for his farm. At first 
Milly was a pretty, perky little thing; she worked 
hard, went to church on Sunday and visited some. 
Then she quit going about, stayed at home with the 
children and worked harder. Finally you never saw 
Milly—only Thad and the children. 

“We heard that her health was bad,” Mrs. Tink¬ 
ham went on. “That was during this last winter. 
But she picked up in the spring, helped Thad put 
his crop in. She held out until this drought set in. 
Then it seems she got queer, just queer at first, you 

106 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

understand. Not so as you’d notice it, she doing her 
work as usual. 

“Then one day last week Mrs. Winch passed the 
Harper place and saw all the little Harper kids sit¬ 
ting out by the roadside, bunched up like a flock of 
lambs in a cold east wind, though it was a broiling 
hot day. They were just sitting there perfectly 
still, the way children do when they are listening 
or afraid or somebody is dead in the house. 

“ c How is your ma?’ Mrs. Winch asked ’em. 

“They kept their eyes on her and didn’t say a 
word. 

“The next day, last Tuesday, we heard Milly had 
lost her mind. She got the idea that the Lord was 
calling her to come home and bring the children 
with her. That’s the way it affected her.” 

Mrs. Tinkham paused and regarded me with a 
sidelong look, as if her mind was sneaking up on 
something it was not lawful to get, and she had it, 
you may say, by the tail feathers. 

“Ain’t it strange,” she began, speaking in a sort 
of surreptitious tone, “how we hear so much about 
the voice of God calling us, and every preacher urg¬ 
ing us to listen to this voice and obey, but just let 
one of us like poor Milly actually hear it and want 
to obey! The ordinary calls a jury. She is ad¬ 
judged insane and they clap her into the asylum! 

107 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


I ain’t saying a word against the voice, you under¬ 
stand, but I say you’d better not believe it with your 
ears, nor get too religious, because if you do it means 
you are crazy. Now, how is that*?” 

I told her I did not know. I thought it wiser not 
to become involved with Mrs. Tinkham in regard to 
the spiritual ear and the spiritual sense. 

“Well, do you want to know what I think*? I 
think Thad Harper worked his wife down to her 
last hope, which was faith in the Lord. She got to 
be a habit he had of thrift and industry. And 
she’s the second woman in three years to be sent 
from this neighborhood to the asylum for the same 
reason. The other one was Mrs. Sutton. She stood 
it for over thirty years. Her children were grown 
and married off. And Sutton was a rich man, but 
he let her go on as she’d started when they were 
young and poor. She would get up at three o’clock 
in the morning and get breakfast, so she’d have time 
to do all she had to do. Finally she wouldn’t go to 
bed at all. Worked all night. Then they sent her 
to the asylum! Don’t talk to me about men!” she 
added, fanning herself fiercely. 

Then she stood up; one might say she blazed up. 
She clinched her fist, held it high over her head as 
if she hoped her heavenly Father would bear wit¬ 
ness to this fist. She roved the store with eyes spit¬ 
ting sparks. 


108 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


“And,” she exclaimed, “I would not marry an¬ 
other one of them—not—not to save his life!” 

Mr. Tinkham, who had been until now beyond 
earshot, stood among the boxes and barrels in the 
rear and regarded his wife with the only grin I ever 
saw upon his sour face. It was at once appreciative 
and victorious. 

Mrs. Tinkham deflated and sat down apparently 
without knowing that she had received this ap¬ 
plause. Still one cannot be sure in a case like this. 
A woman can walk from the room and mean some¬ 
thing by slamming the door behind her that she 
would not dare to say so sharply in words to her 
husband. And a man can deal with his wife by 
merely going out and not coming to dinner, nor 
getting in until long after the supper things are 
cleared away; and when he does come in he can be 
perfectly sober when all this day she has been ex¬ 
pecting him to return intoxicated. He can look 
tired and depressed and take off his shoes as if 
these shoes were shackles and get in bed while she 
pleads with him to have something to eat. They 
have years of practice in doing this kind of business 
with one another. So I could only wonder if Mrs. 
Tinkham had a momentary grudge against her hus¬ 
band or if she was carrying on a sort of virago flirta¬ 
tion with him. 

I doubted, however, if Harper was to blame 

109 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


because his wife had gone mad. They were both in 
the toils of the land. They spent themselves, not 
rationally but submissively, according to the laws 
of Nature. The woman failed because she had 
more to bear and less endurance. 

I had seen the tragedy of poverty which if not 
relieved produces the ablest criminals and the low¬ 
est forms of degradation. Along with other re¬ 
spectable people I had contributed to the relief of 
the poor. But here was something more terrible 
than poverty hidden beneath the opulence of Na¬ 
ture. Here was a tragedy with the eyes of inno¬ 
cent, dutiful women and the bowed shoulders of 
men who could not give up the struggle. Poor 
gamblers against almighty odds. The sunlight 
upon the fields and farm houses, the singing silence, 
the bloom and verdure of the land produce the 
aspect of peace and plenty which does not exist. 
Somewhere a thousand miles away prosperous men 
with soft white hands figure down the price of 
these harvests and figure up their own profits. 
Meanwhile Nature makes her economies by consum¬ 
ing the people. This accounted for the case of 
Milly Harper and for the peonage of the children 
to the land. For nowhere else do children work 
such long hours or endure such hardships. They 
become too stupid to learn. They are born to be¬ 
come the slaves of the land. And when by some 

110 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

lack of quality or courage they do escape from it 
they rarely rise above the lowest forms of indus¬ 
trial labor in the cities and factories. It will be in¬ 
teresting twenty-five years from now to know how 
many great men in this country were born and bred 
on the land. There will not be one. Conditions 
are changed since Lincoln plowed all day and read 
history by the firelight on his mother’s hearth in a 
log cabin. 

Such was the copy of my reflection in August of 
this year. I was still rational. I could think ra¬ 
tionally in the terms of the world where I had 
lived. I had no plan for the future. I was not 
committed to the land. I was determined only to 
save the family estate, much as one withholds 
family portraits at an auction sale. 

Then came the day when I had gone to look at 
Manson’s corn, the superlative moment when the 
old relation was established between me and Red- 
fields plantation. After that the meeting with Man- 
son, the cyclone, and the scene between us when, 
drenched and trembling, I had declared war against 
him. From this moment I was not the same woman. 
I was committed without fear to an adventure which 
from every angle of reason was impossible to ac¬ 
complish. The temptation I had immediately after 
coming home to let Redfields plantation go, return 
to New York and pursue my own career was the 

111 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


sensible solution of my problem. Now I rejected 
it as unthinkable. 

What I mean is this: that the spell of the land 
had fallen upon me. What I am trying to prove 
by the experiences set down in this story is that 
there is magic in the land; that this explains why 
men live and die by it, why they do not organize 
and “strike” or slink off and quit. They cannot. 
Their minds are holden. The curse of Adam is 
upon them like an awful blessing beneath which 
they move and have their being. It is spiritual, the 
land is. And stronger than the spirit of man. 

I had the time at last to face the situation. 
Father was a care but no longer a burden. He 
drifted from his bed to his chair during August. In 
September he was able to shuffle downstairs, at¬ 
tended by Ike. He was a child, gentle and gray, 
who lived in the soft cadence of dreams. He was 
never really awake. Only once had I caught so 
much as a glimpse of the man he had been. Late 
one afternoon we were seated on the veranda, father 
dozing as usual, while I rummaged through a pack¬ 
age of papers looking for the records of his former 
dealings as master of Redfields plantation. Pres¬ 
ently I heard the clatter of horse’s feet, accom¬ 
panied by the whoops and yells of the rider. Then 
the massive figure of a man seated upon a frantic 
little sorrel horse shot past upon the road below. 

112 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

I took it in and glanced at father. He was sit¬ 
ting perfectly erect with the neighing look one old 
charger may have when he hears another going by. 
There was a spark in his eye, the squeal of a smile 
on his face. 

“That’s Winch! He is drunk,” he rumbled. 

But he could not hold this keen blade of a 
thought. He slipped slowly back into that som- 
nambulant figure of magnificent old innocence. 
There was no mark nor shadow of a transgression 
upon him. He was forever removed from them. 
How much more, then, are the best of us and the 
worst of us removed from our sins and our virtues 
by death. When this of us which betrayed the im¬ 
mortal of us is dust past all power to think or re¬ 
member, how shall we be praised or punished here¬ 
after for the deeds done in the flesh? 

I felt the guilt of a theological transgression, but 
strangely tender toward father. 

“Nancy,” he murmured pulingly, “isn’t it time 
for my milk?” 

I do not say that the craving of milk is an evi¬ 
dence of repentance, but it certainly indicated a 
singular purification of taste when we considered 
father’s former cravings. 

I had not seen Black Manson since the day of the 
storm. The only news I had of him was that the 
army worms had practically devoured his corn. 

113 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


Mrs. Tinkham said he appeared to be annoyed but 
in no wise cast down. 

“That man’s got something on the world, or he 
couldn’t take a body blow like that ’thout chang¬ 
ing his expression,” she exclaimed. 

“Do you know him, Nancy?” 

“I have seen him,” I answered discreetly. 

“Well, I ain’t got a thing against him; not a 
thing, but I iust naturally don’t like him.” 

“Why?” 

“I don’t know. But I ain’t by myself. He 
doesn’t make friends; seems as if he don’t feel the 
need of friends. Walks in here, gets his mail and 
walks off without saying ‘peet turkey’ to anybody, 
as if he didn’t have to be pleasant on account of 
wanting to borrow your disk harrow or your buggy 
harness or anything folks like us have to lend to 
each other. And he don’t. He’s got everything or 
the money to get it. But he needn’t rub it in. We 
ain’t rich, but we’ve got our feelings!” 

She had followed me to the door of the store on 
my way out and she was standing in it shading her 
eyes with one hand, making a sort of face at Black 
Manson’s cabin on the edge of the distant wood. 

“And no matter how much a man needs some tool 
Manson’s got, he won’t go up there to borrow it. 
That’s a bad sign, when folks don’t like you well 
enough to borrow from you!” 

114 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


Learned men are teaching psychology in the uni¬ 
versities who do not know as much about the prac¬ 
tical application of this science as Mrs. Tinkham 
does. 

“And there is at least one man about here who 
hates him worse than pisen. I don’t say he has 
cause to hate him, but first thing we know some¬ 
thing is going to happen up there!” she added sig¬ 
nificantly. 

It would be a friendly act to warn Manson, ad¬ 
vise him to borrow somebody’s plow or do some¬ 
thing by way of acknowledging his human de¬ 
pendence upon his neighbors, I reflected. But I 
was not the one to undertake these good offices. 
One cannot consistently show concern for the safety 
of a man upon whom one has wished vengeance 
and declared war. Still I was anxious. 


115 


CHAPTER IX 


The whole of Redfields plantation had been rented 
this year. There were eight tenants. Toward the 
end of September the hay was. cut and the cotton 
was beginning to open. I was very busy from morn¬ 
ing until night looking after the shocking and curing 
of this hay, taking my toll and keeping a record of 
the cotton ginned, seeing that my bales were duly 
delivered to the warehouse at Redfields station. 

This supervision was an innovation for which I 
was destined to pay dearly. Father used the honor 
system in dealing with his tenants. He trusted 
them and accepted his rents without question. Un¬ 
doubtedly they also trusted him, but my experi¬ 
ence quickly proved that they practiced no kind of 
honor when it came to delivering rents. 

I was too busy for the flummery of romance. I 
could only spare the time to answer Oliver’s letters 
briefly. I was about Oliver now as a woman is about 
a piece of finery that she cannot use but keeps laid 
away in lavender. I sent him rose leaf notes oc¬ 
casionally and dismissed him with this dim fra¬ 
grance of a former rose. 

One afternoon I came up from the hay press in 

116 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


the field behind the barn where we were baling hay. 
The frock I wore had been fresh enough in the 
morning, but now it was mussed, covered with 
dust, and one of the draperies had been torn. My 
hair was untidy, and I had long since passed the 
fine satin shade of tan so much admired in the best 
society. My nose was blistered. The sun was shin¬ 
ing hotly, but there was a strong wind blowing. 
I arrived, you may say, on this wind from barn- 
ward, the torn panel of my dress flying in it like 
the ragged feathers of a moulting fowl. 

The moment I turned the corner of the house I 
caught sight of father at the far end of the veranda. 
He was standing up, leaning sidewise upon his cane, 
with a sort of mettlesome look on his face. It was 
the rhetorical attitude of broken-down eloquence, 
and very perilous, seeing that he was in no condi¬ 
tion to trust his legs. 

There was a visitor, I inferred, still invisible to 
me behind one of the intervening columns of the 
veranda. Instantly, however, I caught sight of the 
shadow cast by this person on the wall of the house. 
Legs neatly crossed, back gently bowed, one elbow 
sticking out, one folded close to his side, head lifted, 
fine brow line, Grecian nose, beautiful chin, enough 
neck, no animation. I knew of no other man on 
earth who habitually took so much pains composing 
his own shadow. 


117 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


“Oliver!” I exclaimed, flying around the column 
to greet him. 

“Nancy!” he returned in a retching tone of voice, 
as if the sight of me was an unexpected pain. 

With our hands still clasped he regarded me. 
So might one stare at a beloved picture after van¬ 
dals had smeared it and changed it according to 
their savage fancy. In this instant of time I ceased 
to be the bright taper of loveliness in the dark tomb 
of despair where Oliver kept his passion and sensi¬ 
bilities. I became a shocking fact with blowzy hair 
and a sun-blistered nose. 

“I am so glad to see you; when did you get 
here 4 ?” I asked, hurrying forward to help father 
sit down, which he could not do without assistance. 

“I motored out from Cameron. Might have come 
on to Redfields if I had known the express stopped 
here.” 

“It doesn’t,” I told him. “Nothing stops here 
but the dinkey,” referring to the one-coach accom¬ 
modation train. 

Father had been piteously anxious to carry on 
as host, but now he wanted to know if it was time 
for his milk. The sight of me always reminded him 
to ask for this nourishment. 

I wondered as I went for the milk what train 
Oliver could take, and the soonest. For I knew 
very well that he was also speculating on this same 

118 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


train, and about how he should get through the 
intervening scenes without doing too much vio¬ 
lence to his sickened sensibilities. 

Redfields house had been built before these soft¬ 
ened times, when comfort and cleanliness depend 
upon modern conveniences. There were no electric 
lights nor bathrooms in it. The guest chamber was 
furnished, you may say, with every harsh and ma¬ 
jestic inconvenience. The walls were gray, laid 
off in panels with gold lines. The ceiling was 
lofty and frescoed with a garland of all possible 
and incredible flowers. At each of the four corners 
an exceedingly fat cupid with butterfly wings ap¬ 
peared to be holding on for dear life to the ends of 
these wreaths. They hung suspended by their 
stodgy legs and even through the dust of many years 
one could plainly see a look of fear in the round 
faces of these little infant gods. 

There was a four-poster bed with a canopy of 
satin, very old and faded to the shade of robin’s- 
egg blue. The terrorized eyes of the dangling 
cupids always seemed to be fixed upon this canopy 
as a possible means of breaking their fall in case of 
accident. A portable staircase of three mahogany 
steps led upward to the lofty platform of this bed, 
which was always covered with a white-fringed 
counterpane as the tops of high mountains are cov¬ 
ered with snow. There was a highboy, where since 

119 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


time began in this house the women of it kept their 
finery. Between the two front windows there was 
a terrifically carved bureau, austerely furnished 
with two slim silver candlesticks, a silver-back 
brush and comb, and a magnificent pin cushion 
which had never been violated by a pin—no pow¬ 
der, no perfume, no toilet pots of any kind. Like¬ 
wise the marble-top center table bore a very tall 
glass lamp with a ground-glass globe wreathed in 
clear-glass dogwood blossoms. This lamp stood 
pedestal deep in a splendidly ruffled crocheted mat 
known as the “fern pattern.” 

Coldness and austerity could not surpass the pro¬ 
visions made on this washstand for frigid cleanli¬ 
ness. There was a silver ewer, a shallow silver 
basin, and a very large soap bowl of silver. In the 
adjacent corner there were two tall copper pitchers, 
such as maids still carry filled with hot water up 
flights of stairs in lodgings in old Belgrave Square 
in London. And finally there was a white porcelain 
tub of no mean dimensions. It was decorated inside 
the rim with an opulent wreath of red roses, thorns 
and splendid green leaves. When you think of it, 
especially the thorns, this was a daring illustration 
for the inside of a bathtub. But I recall the stolen 
pleasure I had in it as a little girl. Aphrodite ris¬ 
ing from the white foam of a virgin sea never felt 
more enhanced than I did sitting cross-legged in this 

120 



A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


tub, splashing water, surrounded by this garland of 
roses blinking at me through the spray. 

While I hurried getting father off to bed for the 
night and laying the table for the evening meal I 
thought of Oliver seated in one of the prim maiden 
chairs against the wall of this guest chamber star¬ 
ing about him like a man in bleak weather far from 
home. No softness anywhere, not an inch of vanity, 
but pride and space everywhere. He was so neutral 
and impersonal as a human being that he survived 
by artificial respiration so to speak, borrowed ani¬ 
mation from the life about him. He was an ascetic 
who could never have lived in a cell or on a desert. 
He must have charm, gayety and color for the back¬ 
ground of his ghost. He was the kind of man who 
would require the very things in a room to twinkle 
at him. I wondered which was causing him the 
greater anguish, that glaring chromo bathtub or 
those four fat little pancake gods painted on the 
ceiling overhead. He was by way of being a post- 
impressionist in matters of art. He had even 
reached the post-mortem stage of being a cubist. A 
certain shade of green entranced him. A certain 
tone of brown excited in him the deepest emotions. 
A bit of canvas checked off in green and violent red 
with not even a nose to define its meaning he could 
instantly recognize as the portrait of a warrior, al¬ 
though it might look like nothing but the fragment 

121 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


of a split basket to the eye of a normal person. I 
do not know why this addled mysticism about art in 
him ever appealed to me. I suppose for the same 
reason veils do. He was a man who wore chiffon 
veils of many hues over the face of his imagination. 
Now after these months of harsh objective existence 
Oliver and his diaphanous subterfuges for thought 
and vision seemed to me effeminate and ridiculous. 

At last I ran swiftly upstairs to make my own 
toilet. There were only a few minutes to spare, 
and I flew about the room, flinging off the things 
I had on, pulling out drawers, looking for other 
things to put on after the joyfully distracted man¬ 
ner of a woman who is in great haste to become 
what she was not the moment before merely by 
changing her garments. Having dragged a bed full 
of frocks from every place, I halted before the mir¬ 
ror to do my hair while I made up my mind whether 
I would be a modest maiden to Oliver, in a white 
organdie with a blue sash tied about my waist or 
something easier for me to be. 

When my hair was laved and bound closely until 
it fitted my head like a soft bright crown the girl¬ 
ish organdie was out of the question. I stood for a 
moment in my briefest garment considering this 
matter. Then I flew to the chest of drawers, pulled 
out the bottom one and drew forth a gown that had 
lain so long in its shroud of tissue paper that it was 

122 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


as flat as a flower pressed during some former spring¬ 
time. It was a slim satin thing, rose pink, the bodice 
smooth and plain, cut pridefully low on the shoul¬ 
ders, the skirt slashed and draped over a soft dusty 
yellow petticoat. The two shades were exactly those 
of a Gold of Ophir rose. A pair of pale green satin 
slippers lay in the bottom of this drawer like two 
glistening leaves. I thrust my feet in them, over 
stem-green silk stockings. Then I put on the gown, 
pacing back and forth before the mirror while I 
hooked and fastened and made myself into this rose. 
A woman who receives such answer to prayer must 
pity every rose that blooms and fades and falls 
without ever having beheld the image of its love¬ 
liness! One last dab of the powder puff to that 
still faintly glowing ridge of my nose. All these 
endearing preparations had been made that Oliver 
might experience a sense of bereavement, not relief, 
when I broke my engagement to him. And I de¬ 
scended the stairs feeling safer than a woman ever 
does when she is about to accept a man. 


123 



PART FOUR 


CHAPTER X 

I was about to pass on to the veranda when I 
caught sight of Oliver through the open door in 
the parlor. He was standing like an elegy before 
the portrait of the original Kedie McPherson. The 
artist who painted it may have been a good one; 
certainly he was truthful. Not even the tone of 
time had softened the fierce and rugged face of my 
ancestor. He looked like a very cold day standing 
before a very hot fire. His hair was red, his beard 
flamed, his blue eyes glinted as blue does when bright 
steel is reflected upon it. His bonnet stuck up on 
his head like a rooster’s comb. His kilts were short, 
his legs bare, and his boots were tremendous. Some¬ 
how as he stood there he produced the impression 
of having his back to a strong wind blowing across 
bleak hills and icy mists behind him. 

I moved noiselessly through the door to Oliver’s 
side and drew my arm through his. 

“Do you like him 4 ?” I asked, smiling. 

“I was just thinking that I did not like him, if 

125 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

you don’t mind my saying so,” he returned with 
his eyes still on the picture. 

“Not at all,” I answered him. 

“I doubt if any of us could possibly endure our 
remoter ancestors in the flesh; they impress me as 
being a rough and difficult race,” he said. 

“And so many of them would despise their de¬ 
scendants!” I retorted. 

Oliver never resented a thrust. He would in¬ 
variably fling back a glance, genial and apprecia¬ 
tive, as if he said, “Thank you for the sting. I 
feel it. It proves that I still live.” So now his 
eyes slid from the portrait and rested upon me. He 
had not really seen me until this moment. The look 
faded instantly from humor to the soft courting 
admiration of a lover. 

“The same dear, fierce Nancy!” he exclaimed. 

I felt as if I were about to be kissed. This would 
never do under the circumstances. A kiss is some¬ 
thing you may take if you are engaged, or about 
to be; but when you are resolved upon becoming dis¬ 
engaged it is like checking on your account when 
you have withdrawn your deposit. It is not legal 
according to the laws of love. 

I turned from him, made one step to safety as Ike 
flung the dining room doors open. 

“Dinner is served, Miss Nancy!” he announced. 

“Come on, Oliver, I am hungry. We’ve been 

126 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

baling hay all day,” I said, catching the fold of my 
gown up, showing one green-slippered foot, then the 
other, just enough to add a leaf to the rose of me. 

This reference to the beastly and unbecoming 
business of baling hay was distasteful to him. He 
left it to evaporate in silence. But again as he 
placed me in the tall-back chair at the head of the 
table I felt the probability of being kissed. It is 
clairvoyant, that knowledge women have even when 
their backs are turned to kisses that have not been 
said. 

Fortunately Ike came in at the moment bearing 
a platter of broiled chicken. Oliver stepped with 
the stately dignity of a lying man to his place beside 
me and seated himself. 

I do not think it is possible, or was intended by 
Nature, that women should be entirely honest in 
matters of love. We employ the same methods, 
play the same enchantments whether we accept or 
refuse a lover. But no man knows this or can be 
made to believe it. His vanity blinds him. I knew 
now, for example, by the soft cock-a-doodle light 
in Oliver’s eyes that he was regarding me at this 
moment as an offering made lovely for his pleasure. 
I knew what was passing in his mind because I knew 
Oliver: his poor Nancy was about to become in¬ 
volved in his sentimental ideals of duty. Good 
thing he had come down. Heavens! Suppose he 

127 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


had waited? How long would her vitality and 
loveliness have lasted in a situation like this! 

I was so sure of these plans behind his fine dark 
eyes that I bent my head lower over the platter as 
I served his plate and giggled. 

“It is good to hear you laugh,” he said softly. 

With that I leaned back and turned my face the 
other way, pressed both hands against my breast 
and let out a heart full of laughter. I caroled it. 
Now why? I had nothing against Oliver. He was 
still the same man whom I had accepted. What 
then was the explanation of this mirthful antago¬ 
nism to him, which he did not even suspect? I ask 
the world, I ask all history. Why will a woman do 
this? And my belief is, the last one of us would 
if we suddenly found ourselves out of love with a 
lover, however faithful he is. It is the scandalous, 
mischievous joy we feel of having escaped some¬ 
thing. The truth was that I no longer loved Oliver. 
My vision had cleared. I saw him, knew him be¬ 
reaved of the protecting shield of my own imagina¬ 
tion. This is enough to make any woman laugh at 
any man. 

After one gale of this laughter I composed my¬ 
self and went on with my double duties as hostess 
and rose. 

“What have you been doing with yourself this 
summer?” I asked. 


128 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


“Thinking of you, wishing for you. Nothing 
else—Nancy, I can’t bear it—” 

Ike came in with the biscuits. Oliver retreated. 

Domestic servants and stenographers do greatly 
affect social conversation and business correspond¬ 
ence. They are fearfully efficient chaperons, when 
you think of what might happen if they were not so 
nearly always present or about to be present. 

“Tell me about New York—what is going on. 
It seems years since I was there.” 

“To me it has been an eternity! Nancy—” 

Ike came in with the potatoes and a dish of baked 
apples stuffed with sausage. I saw the flash of a 
frown on Oliver’s smooth brow. 

“Did Herman sell his play 4 ?” I asked, smiling. 

“I think not. Something the matter with that 
play.” 

“Yes, it was good,” I retorted. 

Oliver laughed. 

“What has become of Sledge?” I wanted to 
know. 

“Disappeared, but he will reappear. I never 
liked Sledge. He is a sort of intellectual lizard. 
He runs up and down other people’s ideas. Claims 
them.” 

This was my cue to laugh, remembering how 
Sledge had put a body to one of Oliver’s fancies 
and sold it to a magazine. 

129 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


“You know Sol Stein?” he went on. 

“The man Herman used to lug about with him— 
who tittered when he talked?” 

“The same,” he nodded. “He was a sort of sec¬ 
retary and literary apprentice to Herman. Well, 
he has arrived. Writes flapper plays and gives them 
a moral name. He has stopped tittering and he has 
dropped poor old Herman.” 

“Yes, I know. You remember we dropped the 
Jennings girl the same way,” I reminded him. 

“Oh, she was a nut. Couldn’t write.” 

“But she could think, and she was straight. I 
wonder what became of her.” 

“Still thinking probably, mute inglorious 
Milton!” 

He went on in this acrid vein, discussing our 
friends in New York. I kept pace with him, getting 
the swing of the old days, when conversation was 
either clever cynicism or clever cruelty like this. 

All this time Ike had been earnest in his attend¬ 
ance. He plied Oliver with strange dishes like 
grated-sweet-potato pudding, boiled vegetables, 
baked ham, hot muffins, an astonishing salad made 
of hearts of lettuce, crisp, curly mustard topped 
with red rings of sweet peppers. Oliver regarded 
his plate as a man might regard a fearful tempta¬ 
tion. 

Finally the table was cleared and Ike came in 

1130 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


with cakes and two tall compote glasses filled with 
huckleberries and wine, capped with whipped cream. 
Then he disappeared, Oliver inferred for good, the 
dessert having been served. 

“Nancy, dear love—” he began, leaning 
toward me. 

Ike came through the swinging door with the 
solemn tread of one who brings the benediction of 
a feast. He was bearing a small silver tray upon 
which glistened a coffeepot, a sugar bowl, cream 
pitcher and two brilliantly flowered after-dinner 
coffee cups. 

He served us and took up his position behind my 
chair. Like other old family servants in the South 
he had more than the crumbs from his master’s table. 
He had enjoyed listening to the conversation about 
it for thirty years. 

“What were you going to say?” I asked inno¬ 
cently. 

He cast a hissing look over my head at Ike, who 
no doubt thought it was merely the defect of the 
Yankee eye. Then he dropped it to my face like a 
keen reproach. 

“I was about to say that somebody who cares 
to do a smart thing should start a fashion magazine 
of current literature, call it ‘The Literary Vogue.’ ” 

“But we have them, haven’t we? Reviews and 
reviewers,” I objected, smiling another answer to 

131 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


this quick and graceful retreat from the “Nancy, 
dear love” line of attack. 

“What I mean is this,” he went on without an 
answering flash beneath Ike’s consuming eye. 
“Something has happened. It not only affects 
morals, society, the screen, the theater, every phase 
of our national life—” 

“Heavens! Oliver, you are not becoming a 
moralist!” I interrupted, lifting my hands like two 
exclamations of astonishment. 

“I was going to say when you snapped the girder 
of a well-built sentence, Nancy,” he began with an 
injured air, “that whatever this is it has not only 
changed the mind of our times, it has affected 
words, the manners, meaning and conduct of words. 
The very dictionaries are out of date like your last 
year’s frocks.” 

“So many new ones; yes, of course,” I agreed. 

Oliver frowned as if he dimmed his light to my 
stupidity. 

“There is no longer any authentic and compre¬ 
hensive definition to the words we have, always 
have had,” he corrected. 

“There is no such thing as a pure literary style 
to-day. It is a jugglery with words, clever or worse. 
They are made to caper, prance, toddle in imitation 
of us.” 

I laughed, thinking how like Oliver it was to be 

132 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

thrust out of his intellectual elegance and repose 
by the wind of our times blowing through the lan¬ 
guage of all times. 

“There are no more passive verbs. De Quincey 
'would be as dumb as an oyster if he lived now! 
There are no more good little adjectives that kneel 
meekly behind steady old nouns, because there are 
none. A noun knoweth not the day nor the hour 
when some enterprising author will throttle him 
down into a hard-working verb. All parts of speech 
have lost their dignity and their proper place in the 
sentence.” 

He shot a glance of humorous despair at me, 
still smiling, and went on: 

“You remember Amlett’s story? The Outlaw/ 
I think, was the title of the thing.” 

“Yes! And the awful evening when he read it 
aloud to us after your dinner party,” I replied, turn¬ 
ing my head away from this still wearying remem¬ 
brance. 

“You recall after he got the outlaw strung up, 
crouched, quivering to spring, dirk in hand, at the 
other fellow who had him already, you may say, by 
the eye, how Amlett put in about a thousand words 
of reflection, until our suspense changed to disgust?” 

“And poor Herman’s nerve broke at last,” I re¬ 
minded him with a shriek of laughter. 

“Yes, Herman leaping to his feet and tearing 

133 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

round the room with his hands in his hair, yelling, 
‘Unleash him, Amlett! Gad! Stop fizzling and 
let him say it with the dirk!’ This was the only 
action in that story, as I remember. He could not 
sell it.” 

He paused, picked up his coffee cup, stared into 
it like a man bemused. 

“Well, what happened?” I wanted to know, 
feeling that this halt in the narrative bore a faint 
resemblance to Amlett’s method. 

“Did you by any chance read ‘One Musketeer’ in 
last month’s Highway Magazine?” he asked. 

“No, I have not seen a copy since I came to Red- 
fields.” 

“Amlett’s story. Same thing exactly, but writ¬ 
ten in the hissing style of the moment. I was so 
astonished that I asked Amlett to lunch with me at 
the club next day. I wanted to find out how he 
did it. He told me. Simplest thing, you know. 
Got it from Stacy Ware.” 

“Stacy Ware!” I repeated incredulously, for I 
recalled him as a second-rate actor who played the 
role of heavy villain sometimes and again the role 
of lightweight rascal, but always a joyful, smiling 
villain. 

“Amlett says he studied Ware, the man himself. 
He watched him act, and the lines he said when the 
audience cheered. He discovered that there was 

134 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


always a 'By’George!' or a ‘God!’ or some smoth¬ 
ered exclamation in them, accompanied by leg ac¬ 
tion. He followed Amlett to his club. It seems 
the fellow is always in character. Amlett put down 
all the shock sentences he used. He observed the 
confidential way Stacy exposed himself in conver¬ 
sation, how he invited opinions with questions. He 
perceived that the man was never static mentally 
or physically. He was always going through some 
tale of his own performances as fast as a man could 
snap his fingers. Amlett mastered Ware as Walter 
Besant studied Dickens' novels for five years before 
he wrote one of his own. Then he wrote that story 
of his again, in the first person. Put in the 'Gads' 
and 'By Georges’ and kept the hero striding and 
fighting every inch of the way to where the reader 
could plainly see the crumbling lips of the bottom¬ 
less abyss of destiny awaiting him.” 

“But I thought the outlaw met a good girl, who 
married him and reformed him,” I objected. 

“Hero never is reformed now. He grows stead¬ 
ily worse, frankly so. You merely save him from 
prison, not a life of iniquity. Flapper in breeches 
saved Amlett’s musketeer to that extent.” 

We had risen from the table. Oliver drew my 
arm in his. 

“I think Amlett has done something very clever,” 
I said. 


135 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

“Oh, yes, he told me four editors were pressing 
him for stories. He would say that anyway of 
course. What liars authors and actors are!” he 
concluded. 

We passed the davenport on one side of the great 
fireplace, though I felt Oliver hang back as if he 
meant to stop there; but I chose the high straight- 
back chair on the other side of the hearth. 

“They must be,” I said. 

“Who?” he demanded. 

“Actors and authors.” 

“What do you mean by that?” 

“You said it yourself. I merely confirmed. Only 
some of us—very few—are authors, and all of us 
are actors,” I answered. 

He was standing before the fire; I was staring 
into it. Followed a silence. There is nothing more 
perilous between enemies or lovers. 

“Are you quarreling, Nancy? You used to quar¬ 
rel adorably,” he said in his soft, Orphean voice. 

“No,” I answered, leaning back and giving him 
a cool blue look in exchange for his smile. “I am 
only acting now. I am done with being an author. 
I shall never write anything else.” 

“You are changed. What is it, dear?” 

“You would be changed, too, if you had been 
born again.” 

“You are in trouble! I have felt it. That is 

136 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

why I came down here. Now tell me all about 
everything. I can see, of course, your father.” 

He had drawn an old-fashioned two-armed stool 
close to me. He sat down and reached for my 
hand. I placed it securely in my own other hand 
and held it. 

“Father is the least of my cares,” I answered. 

“Something is wrong,” he insisted. 

“No, everything is right—with me at last. I 
have found my place, my work and the life I was 
meant to live.” 

“This is preposterous. You cannot be planning 
to stay here!” 

I nodded my head and looked again into the fire. 

“But you are engaged to me, Nancy. You have 
promised to be my wife. And we cannot live here; 
you know that.” 

“You could not, but I can, and—I want to. I 
belong here, nowhere else!” I said. 

“You are morbid. You have been brooding. I 
should have come sooner.” 

“I am glad you did not. A little while ago I 
might have been tempted to give up the fight. Now 
I cannot. I am pledged.” 

“What fight, what pledge?” he demanded. 

“Oliver, you will never understand, but I will 
tell you,” I began. 

Then I told him the whole story of father’s mis- 

137 



A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

fortunes; what Redfields meant to me; of the debts, 
of my determination to remain there and pay them 
and keep the place. I must have showed much the 
same spirit one shows about rescuing a noble rela¬ 
tive from the dire straits of poverty. 

Suddenly I halted in the midst of this narrative. 
Oliver bent nearer. His eyes, fixed on mine, quick¬ 
ened softly. He showed me the corners of a smile, 
tender but amused, as if what I had been telling him 
was relatively unimportant. 

“So that’s it!” he exclaimed, clasping his hand 
over my hand, resting on the arm of my chair. 

“No, Oliver,” making an effort to withdraw this 
hand as one refuses to sign another promissory 
note. 

“Evidently, if there is a God, he is a jealous 
God,” he laughed softly, keeping his hold upon my 
hand now with both of his. 

“You have been sleep-walking toward the Al¬ 
mighty,” he went on. “Don’t you know that is 
what idealism is; a somnambulance which leads to 
complete and hopeless sacrifice. Nothing else, no 
other reward. It is the sign of the Cross through 
the ages by which the good and the merciful crucify 
themselves for the weak and the incompetent. I 
have been a fool to leave you so long here alone! 
What a sacrifice you might have made of your life, 

138 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


your loveliness and your tenderness!” leaning for¬ 
ward suddenly and drawing me to him. 

“You shall have Redfields! It shall be my wed¬ 
ding present to you,” he whispered tenderly. 

For one moment, although I no longer loved 
him, I felt the sweet anguish of love. There can¬ 
not possibly be any kind of honesty in the mere 
nature of us! One instant I lay like a flame against 
Oliver’s breast. And I doubt if it was honor at last 
which gave me the strength to thrust him from me, 
but it was the quick flash of moonlit darkness 
through my memory, peopled with stars and shadows 
and one man. 

“You—I must not!” I gasped. 

We sat there, I with my hands pressed now 
against my breast, regarding him breathlessly and 
tearfully; he, erect, flushed, covering me with a 
stare of angry amazement. 

“I knew you would not understand,” I began, 
speaking with the fierce energy of self-defense. 
“You cannot give me Redfields.” 

“Why?” in a tone which implied curiosity; not 
as if he had any longer a desire to make this gift. 

“Because Redfields is a part of me. It is the 
land from which I literally did come. It is closer 
kin than flesh or blood. It will be here when noth¬ 
ing else kin to me is. I must save it and hold it. 

139 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


It cannot be bought or given, but kept like—like a 
virtue. 5 ’ I concluded haltingly, seeing that he was 
not even attentive to what I was saying. He sat 
elegantly composed, with a sort of listening look 
on his face as if the loud beating of my heart told 
him every secret a woman never tells. He heard 
this, not my voice. 

“Besides , 55 I went on after a pause, “I am 
changed. I am not the woman you knew, loved, in 
New York. And here—where I belong—I do not 
—could not feel the same—to you . 55 

His gaze had become personal to me again, not 
familiar but distant and appraising. 

“Well, go on , 55 he encouraged with the flicker of 
a smile. 

“That is all , 55 I breathed. 

“I thought better of you, Nancy. I really be¬ 
lieved you were different—from me, all of us. I 
counted on your truthfulness. Your artless and in¬ 
vincible candor intrigued me , 55 he said, politely tri¬ 
umphant. 

“What do you mean *? 55 

“That love is the great illusion, stronger than 
any ideal, or conscience or resolution. You make 
a subterfuge of Redfields to conceal the truth. It 
is unworthy of you. I thought you had more cour¬ 
age . 55 

“I have courage , 55 I exclaimed hotly. 

140 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

“Not enough to admit the truth. There is some 
one else.” 

“No!” I cried. 

I felt a tide rising, hot and blinding. My face 
burned. I caught a fold of my dress, held it tightly 
as we cling to something or anything to keep from 
losing everything. Yet slowly my eyes fell before 
Oliver’s, who had risen and stood looking down 
at me. 

“It makes no difference, but why should you deny 
it? I suppose it is the woman of you!” he sneered. 

“There is no one else,” I sobbed, covering my 
face, feeling more anguish for my innocence than 
I could have felt if I had been more successfully 
guilty of this charge. 

There are fearful truths hidden in all of us which 
we ought never to admit. At this moment I would 
gladly have passed a life sentence upon Oliver to 
love me, knowing well how incapable I must always 
be now of returning his love. Men are different. 
Once they are out of love with a woman they resent 
her devotion. It is abhorrent to them. 

Some slight movement Oliver made caught my 
attention. I looked up in time to see him thrust 
his watch back into his pocket. 

“Ten o’clock. Car should be here now,” he said, 
glancing toward the window with the hurried look 
of an impatient traveler. 

141 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

“What car?” 

“Taxi from Cameron. Man promised to come—” 

“But Oliver,” I interrupted, rising. “You were 
not—of course you will not go to-night.” 

I knew that he had had no such intention earlier 
in the afternoon. It was I who had speculated then 
upon his hasty departure. 

He omitted me on his way to the window. At 
the same moment we both heard the purr of a motor 
approaching the house. 

“HI run up for my bag. No time to lose,” he 
said, turning again to me. 

“Good-by, Nancy; it’s been a great experience. 
And I am grateful,” he said, catching my hand in a 
quick clasp, giving me a look which was not quite 
devoid of irony. 

Even then I might have flung myself upon his 
breast but for the sudden realization that he had 
provided for this escape, probably by phone, after 
his arrival and before he could possibly have known 
that I meant to release him. 

I gave him a look for his look, a smile for his 
irony, in which I think no shadow of defeat showed. 

“Good-by, dear. You were right. There is some 
one else,” I said with a laugh. 

One cannot really strike the shadow of a sub¬ 
stance. Still I felt Oliver’s hand tremble as he re- 
leased mine. The next moment he was on the stairs. 

142 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


Almost immediately I heard him descending; then 
the bang of the door of the taxi, the roar of the 
motor and two swiftly moving moons of light as the 
car passed the window. 

I stood as he had left me in that vast room, mak¬ 
ing up my accounts as a woman. It is a form of 
emotional arithmetic that can always be done by 
heart. My appearance that afternoon when I came 
up from the hay press had shocked Oliver. He was 
not the man to make love to any creature so ob¬ 
vious, healthy and disheveled. 

Father’s condition must have been abhorrent to 
him, like some form of decay with human eyes and 
a beard. The worn-out splendors of this old house 
must have depressed him. He was not a man for 
all weathers. To become the son-in-law of such a 
situation even in New York offended his neur¬ 
asthenic imagination. When he came down to the 
parlor before dinner he had seen the telephone. 
While he was waiting for me to join him he had 
called the garage at Cameron and ordered the taxi, 
to take him back in time to catch the midnight ex¬ 
press for New York. 

This, I decided, was what had happened. Then 
I had come down, pink and golden, smoothed and 
fashioned as he had always seen me. The expiring 
lover of him was revived. His confidence was re¬ 
stored. His ardor was the stronger by this reaction. 

143 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


Probably if I had left the room directly after din¬ 
ner he would have hastened to countermand that 
order for the taxi. Upon such trivial circumstances 
may the fate of lovers depend. A thought never 
uttered may divide them forever. A look may unite 
them. My Gold of Ophir gown had won Oliver 
back to me. The image of a man in my heart as 
faint as the sense of guilt for a deed you cannot 
commit had sundered us forever. 

There was a long mirror in a gilt frame on the 
wall of the parlor between the two front windows. 
I caught my reflection in it, took a step nearer and 
regarded this last rose of myself. I felt more than 
forlorn: bereaved, strangely fearful. All the boughs 
of my mind seemed to tremble, shed their bloom in 
the blast from the windy years to come. 

I moved about the room putting out the candles 
that had glowed upon me and enhanced me. A 
woman feels very queer sometimes when she is alone 
and about to be in the dark and does not know 
where her next loaf of a lover is to come from. I 
crept upstairs to my room in the pitch dark, un¬ 
dressed in it and lay down upon my bed as if this 
bed had become the grave of the woman I should 
never be again. 


144 


CHAPTER XI 


Early in September five of the eight tenants on 
Redfields plantation gave notice. I asked Mr. 
Shorts, the first one, why he was going. His ex¬ 
planation was brief and of such a nature as to 
admit of no argument. He said he was a man and 
preferred to deal with men in business. He doubted 
if he could “get along with a woman.” 

That settled it. I could not change my gender. 

The worry I had collecting rents and closing ac¬ 
counts with these men was the beginning of the en¬ 
chantment of troubles which bound me closer day 
by day to Redfields. I was not aware of the fact 
that failure stared me in the face when only three 
tenants were willing to take the desperate chance of 
renting land from me another year. I had no time 
to plan what I would do with the five hundred acres 
of land they were leaving. 

My impression is that under the new dispensation 
of citizenship and other industrial advantages only 
half of the problem for women has been solved. 
They may vote, and they may obtain employment 
from men and corporations. But I doubt if the 
Almighty himself can make an adjustment by which 
men can be induced to work for women on the 

145 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


purely commercial and industrial basis. They do 
work for them. There are thousands of men in this 
country in peonage to their wives and daughters. 
They spend themselves in the vain effort to provide 
for the comfort and indulgence of these women who 
belong to them, and they are prideful about that. 
But secretly and forever it is a humiliation to any 
kind of man to hire to a woman no matter how well 
she pays him, nor how fairly she treats him. And 
he has the same instinct for deceiving her in busi¬ 
ness that he has always exercised in the nearer do¬ 
mestic relationships. Only if she may be hood¬ 
winked is she endurable to him. But if she will 
persist in seeing through his deceits he regards her 
as unnatural and unbearable. I do not know why 
this is so, but it is. 

Besides these cares, which multiplied as the season 
advanced, I was anxious about father’s affairs. It 
was useless to question him. And I could find no 
record among his papers of the mortgage. But it 
had been duly recorded in the county clerk’s office at 
Cameron. It was given for the sum of twenty 
thousand dollars to Black Manson one year and 
eight months previous to this time. And it was to 
be paid three years from date. In short, I had one 
year and four months in which to raise this sum, 
plus the interest which amounted to fourteen hun¬ 
dred dollars a year. I could find no receipt nor 

146 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

cancelled check to show that interest had been paid 
the previous year. 

So long as she has a lover or a husband there is 
something between a woman and the inevitable. 
Even if this is a purely imaginary fortification she 
gets a soothing sense of protection from the mere 
presence of this man in her life. The next morn¬ 
ing after Oliver’s departure I found myself in these 
reduced circumstances. I was bitterly rational. For 
the first time I faced the situation at Redfields with 
no mental or romantic reservations upon which to 
rest. 

Shortly after lunch, having settled father before 
the library fire for his afternoon nap, I climbed 
into his old roadster and drove to Cameron. I went 
at once to the First National Bank and asked for 
Mr. Morrison. For years father had kept his de¬ 
posits and his debts in this bank. If any one could 
furnish information about his affairs Morrison 
should be able to do so. 

He was a little, round, rubicund-faced man. His 
head was bald on top, very pink; his crisp gray hair 
stuck out above his ears. His eyes were narrow, 
blue. One received the impression that he sharp¬ 
ened these eyes as a cat sharpens its claws. That 
is to say, when he looked at you they seemed to 
stick in. He had a clever mouth and a false-tooth 
smile. You would have said that he was a rascal. 

147 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


As a matter of fact he was merely a very good 
business man. He could not be moved by another’s 
needs, however imperative. He invariably had a 
hunch about what kind of securities to buy, which 
man could or should not be trusted. In short your 
money was safe in his bank. And his advice was 
good. 

He received me in his private office as a widow 
or an orphan is sometimes received—behind the 
scenes in a bank, where the last fearful settlements 
are to be made according to the facts and the debit 
column the deceased left behind him, of which you, 
as the widow or the orphan, are usually totally 
ignorant. 

His manner was as grave as that; not a tooth of 
his smile gleamed. He wished me good afternoon, 
bade me be seated and asked about father’s health. 

We got through with that. Then I asked him 
about father’s balance in the bank. Unfortunately 
there was no balance, he said firmly, as if he ex¬ 
pected an unreasonable woman might deny this. In 
that case he had the cancelled checks, beginning to 
whisk papers about in his desk in search of these 
checks. I said that I was not surprised, whereupon 
he left off looking for them and looked at me. His 
eyes sunk in, but I was aware of the inward purring 
of his mind. The sight of me, I inferred, was grate¬ 
ful in case I was sensible and did not appeal to his 

148 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


sympathies. So few women understood that a 
banker could not afford to be sympathetic! 

I came at once to the point. I mentioned the 
mortgage. He nodded his head solemnly as if I 
had mentioned a funeral. I asked him if he knew 
whether the interest had been paid last year. 

He did not know. But he rather inferred that 
it had not been paid. 

“Your father was an honest man, superlatively 
so, but he had no head for business,” he said in a 
tone which implied that now it was probably too 
late for business. 

“I doubt if he was in a position to pay Manson. 
He was hard pressed last fall,” he added gently. 

“You might find out from Manson,” I suggested. 

“I could hardly do that under the circumstances. 
He has no account with us or any other bank in 
Cameron, I believe,” he informed me with an air 
of offended dignity, meaning that Manson had in¬ 
sulted these banks by the palpable omission of these 
financial courtesies. 

“Well, if it has not been paid it must be!” I 
announced. 

“But how?” 

“There is the cotton, and I shall have some hay 
to sell.” 

“Cotton is down and slipping every day. Enough 
hay would be better. But twenty-eight hundred 

149 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

dollars is quite a sum. Besides there would be the 
interest on the unpaid interest of last year. You 
will find it difficult to raise so much/’ he said. 

I retorted by taking a check from my purse. 

“You may deposit this to my account.” 

“A thousand dollars!” he murmured, staring cor¬ 
dially at this elegant piece of paper. 

“The advance royalties on my book,” I offered, 
feeling that it was not necessary to add that these 
royalties were rarely duplicated by later sales. 

He was polite. He had not seen the book. What 
was the title 4 ? Ah! “Three Lovers!” Very good! 
He must get it. Then he went back to the check, 
looked on the back to see if it was properly in¬ 
dorsed. 

“This might help, of course, but I do not advise 
you to spend it that way,” he said without look¬ 
ing up. 

“Why 4 ?” 

“Well, it is too much to lose and not enough to 
save the situation.” 

“What do you advise 4 ?” 

“You can do something. You know how. Very 
few women do. They know how to be good or 
not good. Or maybe earn a wage. My advice to 
you is to do the thing you know, write.” 

“But,” I exclaimed, “it is not so easy to earn 

150 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


enough to pay this mortgage on Redhelds. Be¬ 
sides—” 

“Why pay it? Let Redhelds go.” 

I felt as if he had uttered a blasphemy. 

“I know how you feel. Every one feels that way 
about an old home place.” 

“No, they do not,” I interrupted. “If they did 
land would not be for sale. It would remain in 
the family, the people who live on it would love it 
and build it and keep it as they do their honor. It 
is the only way to make an enduring civilization. 
Root men in the land. Then we should have some 
peace and permanency. We should not be selling 
and moving hither and thither.” 

He listened, watching me with his keen claw eyes. 

“And the land. Think of that. It is the one 
eternal thing we can see with the naked eye. The 
foundation of everything, always being sold, always 
passing from one stranger to another. Not loved, 
never cherished. It is like selling your parent into 
slavery, speculation on your closest kin. This shall 
never happen to Redhelds!” 

“Sentiment, Nancy, admirable sentiment, but it 
does not get you anywhere in this situation. This 
is why land is sold—for only one of two reasons, to 
make money or to pay debts. How else can you 
meet your father’s obligations?” 

151 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


I was silent. 

“Have you any definite plan?” 

“Only to live there and—and work it out,” I 
stammered. 

“But how? Have you rented for another year?” 

I told him about that—the tenants leaving. 

“Do you realize what an outlay of capital you 
would require to farm all that land yourself? 
Have you had any experience ? Do you know what 
labor is?” 

I did not know, only that a lot of men were un¬ 
employed. There should be no difficulty about ob¬ 
taining labor. 

“They are without work, those men, because they 
will not work. The virus of the rich has entered 
the poor. They will not work! They walk the 
streets looking for jobs. You will never hear of 
them on country roads looking for work. They 
don’t want it. They are lazy, bad. You could 
not manage such labor. Nobody can. It is the 
sediment in the cup of our national life. This is 
why presently you will see the Government provid¬ 
ing public works for these men—bridges, road build¬ 
ing. That, my dear Nancy, will be political charity 
by taxation!” 

He went on hotly: 

“Remember the culvert over that little stream 
this side of Redfields station?” 

152 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


“Yes,” I said half smiling, knowing that he was 
suffering from the universal animus which follows 
the payment of taxes. 

“That is an example of what I mean. Took nine 
men ten days to put in that culvert. They were 
paid anywhere from five to eight dollars a day. 
Public work, you understand! This county pays 
twenty per cent of all taxes to keep up its roads. 
What have we*? Six hundred miles of mud and 
ruts, not ten miles of solid road in it! 

“Well, do you think labor will make any distinc¬ 
tion when it comes to work on a farm? Not on 
your life. Bless my soul, aren’t they trying to 
unionize farm labor at this very moment!” he ex¬ 
claimed, bringing his fist down with a bang that 
made the papers on the desk titter. 

“Imagine trying to get in a hay crop with eight- 
hours-a-day men! It is preposterous! Something 
is going to happen, Nancy, to the land next. You’d 
better keep out of the way of it! What does it cost 
you to write a book? What’s the investment?” he 
demanded, narrowing his eyes to two blazing blue 
points. 

“I don’t know. I have never thought about it,” 
I answered. 

“Bottle of ink. Say, a quart of ink, though I 
should think you ought to get four or five books out 
of that much ink.” 


153 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


I laughed. 

“Well, that’s seventy-five cents, best quality. 
Three or four pounds of paper, one dollar.” 

I threw up my hands and shrieked. My mirth 
was not contagious. 

“That’s the layout. One dollar and seventy-five 
cents,” he went on seriously. 

“You forgot postage.” 

“Make it fifty cents, though that is padding your 
expense account,” he said, jotting this item down. 

“I must live. That costs something,” I suggested. 

“Of course. You must live. Now what does that 
cost?” eying me, pencil suspended. 

“One can do it modestly in New York on five 
hundred dollars a month,” I told him. 

He glared at me. The hand holding the pencil 
stiffened virtuously. 

“This is rank extravagance!” he exclaimed. “If 
you had to, you could live and work on, say, a hun¬ 
dred dollars a month.” 

“Well, make it a hundred, though I never have,” 
I told him. 

“That is a hundred and two dollars and twenty- 
five cents—” 

“But you allow only a month,” I protested. 

“Well, how long does it take to write a book?” 

“That depends,” I hedged. 

“Make it three months,” he suggested. “If you 

154 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


kept at it I should think you might write a very 
good story in three months. Three hundred and 
six dollars and seventy-five cents you invest, and you 
may receive from a thousand to, say, twenty thou¬ 
sand in royalties . 55 

“That is a gross exaggeration , 55 I protested. 

“You have already earned more than three hun¬ 
dred per cent on your investment with this last one , 55 
he retorted, tapping the check I had given him. “If 
I made such profits on the moneys in this bank, I 
should be behind the bars in no time. I should 
serve from five to twenty years in the penitentiary 
for cheating and swindling! 

“Now what do you suppose it would cost you to 
finance Redfields plantation for a year*? Not less 
than ten thousand dollars. And all the risks added 
of floods and droughts which may destroy your 
harvests . 55 

I remained stubbornly silent. 

“I am talking sense, Nancy, not sentiment , 55 he 
insisted. 

“There is a sense of things which cannot be com¬ 
puted in dollars , 55 I retorted. 

“Maybe so. I am not denying that. But the 
world you live in, the people you deal with do not 
recognize it—that kind of sense. Besides, Nancy, 
you are in the air. You have no plan . 55 

“I shall make one , 55 I returned stoutly. 

155 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

He threw up his hands and stared at me despair¬ 
ingly. 

Then he folded them on the desk before him, 
leaned upon them and came back at me hammer 
and tongs. 

“Suppose you gave yourself up to this project 
and succeeded, even granting that would be pos¬ 
sible, have you considered what will happen?” he 
asked. 

“I should be a proud and happy woman,” I told 
him. 

“No, you would not. You would be a tired broken 
woman or a tired fierce one. Life on a farm roughs 
a woman up, and it tears her down. It rubs the 
bloom off. It fades her, takes away the delicacy and 
grace of her beauty. It makes her silent, if not 
stupid. Men of your own class do not love such 
women.” 

I thought of Oliver and flushed. 

“Don’t be angry, my dear,” seeing this color 
flame in my cheeks. “I only want to save some¬ 
thing rare and fine. You will allow an old man 
and a friend of your father’s to pay you the com¬ 
pliment you deserve. It is not flattery. Keep 
yourself. Don’t make a vain sacrifice. 

“Sell Redfields. There is a boom right now in 
land. It will not last. Make haste to advertise the 
place for sale. Manson will buy it. He wants it. 

156 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


He will offer a good price. Before the end of the 
year you could have settled all accounts and be 
back in New York with nearly a hundred thousand 
dollars in your pocket. The struggle would be over 
before it begins. You would be safe, comfortable, 
still young, worth so much in loveliness. You could 
provide better for your father. And where Kedie 
McPherson is now makes no difference. He no 
longer knows nor thinks.” 

I had risen. I was moving toward the door, look¬ 
ing back at him reproachfully. He followed me, 
talking very fast, trying to detain me. 

“I will not sell Redfields to Black Manson,” I 
said. 

“Oh, very well; sell it to some one else then, but 
sell it. Sell it, Nancy!” 

“Not while I live!” I cried, feeling the hot tears 
in my eyes. I have always been subject to tears 
and laughter. 

“Think it over, my dear,” he entreated, taking 
my hand at the door, caressing it, you may say, 
pityingly, with his other hand. “Don’t commit 
yourself to this—this admirable folly until you 
think it over!” 

He was a kind man, I decided, but not one from 
whom I might hope to borrow money. 


157 


CHAPTER XII 


I should have been depressed, and was not. De¬ 
pression, I believe, is a form of selfishness. You 
cannot feel it without being woefully conscious of 
yourself. This is the reason why so many women 
and a few men live lives of what seems to others 
senseless sacrifice. They are intoxicated spiritually. 
They become addicted to a sort of divine inebria¬ 
tion. They have escaped from themselves, their 
own desires. It is a tremendous liberty to achieve. 
I had some such sensation as this. I was redeemed 
from the world, restored to the land, the original 
birthright of every man and every woman. There 
was a mortgage on this birthright, to be sure, but 
that was a worldly matter, to be overcome as one 
overcomes the world, maybe the flesh, sometimes 
the devil. That mortgage did not concern me in this 
mood. I had an inkling of what it is to be a Chris¬ 
tian, the same high emotional piety which I imagine 
they sometimes feel. That is to say, I was magnifi¬ 
cently financed for the moment with the substance 
of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen. 
There was everything to fear, and I feared nothing. 
I was sublime. What else is it to be a Christian*? 

Cameron is twenty miles from Redfields. I drove 

158 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

slowly along the country road through valleys 
sparkling with the last flare of summer flowers, over 
hills that were gray with stubble, through forests 
where the October leaves blazed red and golden— 
feeling everything, the light, the charm, the sweet 
ripeness of the air, taking a breath of this wind 
as it flew by. I saw the tops of trees nod to me 
as one friend greets another friend passing on the 
road. A red bird perched among the redder pods 
of sumac whistled a note to me. I primped my lips 
and whistled back. He flirted his tail and cocked 
his eye. I laughed. I was related to this bird. I 
was home again with all these first things created, 
the grass, the herbs of the fields, where the best is 
meant and nothing is said. I had made my vows 
to the land for better or for worse. I was ineffably 
happy. So do brides go to their husbands—not 
knowing. 

You will understand that this was some kind of 
incantation. For not three months before I held 
other views altogether. I was able then to see 
clearly the conditions about me and to reason ac¬ 
cordingly. I was appalled then by the poverty and 
hardships endured by the people next to the land. 
I was impatient with their patience. It seemed 
stupid. I was in a fever to escape from this mo¬ 
notony, the secret desolation, the awful impending 
providences which hung forever over the land and 

159 



A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


the harvest and these living souls. Now I was one 
of them, taking root in these vicissitudes, ready to 
live and die according to the weather and the al¬ 
mighty will of God in the land. Never doubt Gene¬ 
sis! The truth of all truths is recorded there. We 
are born to the land, and to nothing else; neither 
to wealth, nor fame, nor ideas, nor wisdom, but to 
the land and the everlasting urge in that curse by 
which Adam was ordained. We may think we can 
escape it, but we cannot. The institutions, the civi¬ 
lizations we build—they are blown away in a gust 
of war, in the revolutions which pass through the 
minds of men without the firing of a gun. Only the 
land remains. Five cities may be found one above 
the other buried in the same pile of dust, and the 
grass grows green above. And men plow a field 
where Troy stood. The queer thing is that the 
great masses of men never think what this means. 
There is a sort of centrifugal force in their mad¬ 
ness which drives them to whirl and whirl into cities, 
until their very frenzy destroys what they have 
made. No city, no great commercial center of any 
kind can possibly last. It is a sort of bad place on 
the land choked with human weeds. What they 
produce is not good. It is the root of many evils. 

But if you are born of the clean dust, if the salt 
in your veins has not lost its savor, you always have 
the chance of coming back. Some day through the 

160 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

smoke of a thousand factories and furnaces you get 
a glimpse of blue sky which reminds you of a hill 
or a field or the little house where you were born 
beside a country road, and where you lived before 
you made this damnable rise in the world which 
landed you in a city office with a dozen push buttons 
under the edge of your mahogany desk for sum¬ 
moning your clerks and secretaries. You desire 
above everything to go back there. It is the call 
of the land like the voice of God in you. Of course 
you do not go back. You have lost your stamina. 
You know it. You know that you have no real 
life in you, only the reflections of life and moods 
and markets in you. So you remain where you 
are, and push the buttons under your desk until 
some fine morning Nature pushes her button—the 
one that calls you. Then you get a stroke. And 
you are presently laid by your heels in the family 
vault on your lot in the city cemetery, with a 
load of hothouse flowers spread about to conceal 
what a fool you have been all your successful life. 
Even then it is possible that the very dust of your 
bones aches for the little old graveyard behind the 
country church and a comfortably leaning tomb¬ 
stone, and a little grass growing kindly upon the sod 
above you. But you will never get it! When your 
funeral decorations fade not even the wind can 
blow a seed that will sprout on a mausoleum! 

161 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

When I reached Redfields house late in the after¬ 
noon Ike met me as usual, but with more of the 
whites of his eyes showing than usual. This is the 
mark of news in the negro countenance. 

“Father all right 4 ?” I asked cheerfully. 

“He done gone to baid, Miss Nancy,” gathering 
up the packages in the bottom of the car. 

“At this hour*? It is not four o’clock! Is he ill*?” 
anxiously. 

“No’m, jest narvous. I ain’t been long took him 
upstairs. Fie restin’ quiet as a hawk in a tree 
now.” 

“But why did he go to bed 4 ?” I insisted as we 
entered the house. 

Ike, with his arms full of the purchases I had 
made in Cameron, halted, crooked himself sidewise 
as if he dodged some invisible blow and rolled his 
eyes ominously at the library door. 

“She’s in dar!” he whispered hoarsely. 

“Who 4 ?” also fixing my eyes on this door. 

“Mrs. Broadwick!” in a still lower whisper. 
“She came ’reckly after you lef’. Your pa stood it 
untel three o’clock. Den he took de fidgets, and I 
had to take him out. He cain’t b’ar dat ’oman! 
She came over here once while you was away in 
New York and rid him ’round de ring about de way 
he was doin’. She preached him a serman on 
temp’ranee and gawdliness. He may be sorter 

162 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


droopy in his haid, but he ain’t forgot! Dis eve¬ 
nin’ when she come bustin’ in on him settin’ so 
peaceful, he cotch one look at her an’ his mustaches 
spread like he was hxin’ to fly away on ’em. He 
was skeert! He’s been ’voidin’ dat ’oman—” 

“Hush, Ike,” I interrupted, “take those things to 
the kitchen and—” 

“Nancy! Is that you?” came a woman’s deep, 
raucous voice from the library. 

I thrust the door open and entered, not without 
some trepidation. 

I had known Mrs. Broadwick since I was a child. 
She had been mother’s only intimate friend. I re¬ 
membered her as a large, florid woman who used 
to sit beside mother’s bed and shake when she 
laughed. And I would be sitting behind the end of 
mother’s trunk, this much protected from the blue 
omniscience of Mrs. Broadwick’s eye. She fasci¬ 
nated me, and I was afraid of her. But when she 
laughed I stuck my head out and watched her do it. 
It was like a carol rumbling round in a very big jug 
until it escaped in a whoop. She is the only woman 
I ever knew who could whoop her merriment. If 
they get that far they usually shriek. And there 
would always be the glow of a smile on mother’s 
pale face, as if this great creature had reached over 
and lighted a candle there. Mother loved her as 
the dying love life and light and the firm touch of 

163 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


strong, tender hands. I felt obliged to love her be¬ 
cause mother did. Otherwise I should have in¬ 
stinctively avoided her as Adam did his Maker 
after his first transgression, because even as a young 
child I never was without some guilt sticking to me, 
and I always felt that Mrs. Broadwick searched me 
when she looked at me. 

She was larger now, redder; her eyes beneath the 
wrinkled lids more prominent, glistening with* the 
same terrific intelligence. She was sitting in the 
largest chair. The arms of it fitted her like two 
braces. 

At the sight of me she engaged in a struggle with 
her amorphous body. It merely heaved but did not 
rise. It occurred to me in a flash as I hastened to 
take her outstretched hands that I might be obliged 
to call Ike in to pull her out of this chair! 

“How do you do, Mrs. BroadwickI am so glad 
to see you,” I exclaimed, bending to kiss her. 

“I should have been over sooner, my dear,” she 
said, still holding my hands and staring up into my 
face as if she looked for something and did not 
find it. 

“But you see how it is with me. All my years 
have gone to fat. It is very difficult to get about, 
or up when I’m down, or down when I’m up!” she 
went on, releasing me. 

164 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


I drew a chair close to her and asked her how 
she had been this hot summer. 

She said she had melted, of course, but one could 
melt and melt, she found, and still grow larger and 
larger every day. 

“You are not in the least like your dear mother, 
Nancy!” she added, because this was the uppermost 
thought in her mind. And she would say that one 
no matter what it was. 

“No,” I admitted regretfully. 

“You are a McPherson, hair and all, but the only 
pretty woman of that breed I ever saw!” she con¬ 
cluded. 

I waited, hoping this would start the rumble of 
her laughter. But she remained serious, with the 
corners of her fine strong-lipped mouth drooping. 

“Your father seems to be doing very well,” she 
said grimly. 

“Yes, better than we dared hope.” 

“I always liked him,” she announced. “And he 
never understood that I did. I could have loved 
Kedie McPherson. Any woman would.” 

“My goodness!” I thought, but aloud I said: 

“He is an old darling!” 

“Yes, now,” she agreed dryly. “But I never 
blamed your mother for marrying him, though she 
might have done better by herself,” sighing. 

165 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

I could think of no suitable reply to make to such 
frankness. 

“Nancy,” she began after a pause, “I came over 
to see you this afternoon. I meant to spend it with 
you. But you were not here.” 

“I am now,” smiling cordially. 

“Yes, but it is growing late, the days are so short 
now. The buggy will be here for me at four 
o’clock.” 

“Spend the night, let me telephone them not to 
come for you,” I insisted. 

“I wish to die in my own bed. I shall be doing 
that presently,” she said simply. 

“Don’t think of it,” I cried, feeling the chill of 
her strange fortitude. 

“Well, you would, and not so regretfully if you 
were as old and lonely and as fat as I am. If I’m 
raised a spiritual body I want to be a slender spir¬ 
itual body, and young! And if my thoughts could 
be raised, the wishes I have wished, I should have 
children there,” she went on in her deep, tolling-bell 
voice. 

I was tempted to laugh; then I felt that moisture 
in the eyes I so often have, the mere prescience of 
tears. I leaned over and kissed her. 

We heard the sound of wheels outside. 

“That’s Tim with the buggy,” she said, “and I 
haven’t told you why I came.” 

166 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

She regarded me searchingly. I do not know 
why, but I blushed. 

“Nancy, I must see you,” she exclaimed, as if in 
answer to my flaming color. “I have something to 
say to you. It is important. And I haven’t time 
to say it now. Tim will have the stock to feed when 
we get home. Can you come over for a while to¬ 
morrow afternoon?” her voice was entreating. 

“I shall be glad to come.” 

“Well, as early as you can. I have so much to 
say, before it is too late. Did you ever notice how 
often it is too late to do what we meant to do or 
to say what we meant to say? Of course not. You 
are young yet!” 

All this time she was struggling, undulating, try¬ 
ing to rise from the chair. 

“Give me your hand,” she said. 

I did, leaned, swung back like a slender lever— 
and pulled! She came up slowly, tremendously, 
planting her stout cane with a whack to steady her¬ 
self. We started for the veranda before which the 
buggy stood, she making labored steps with her feet 
wide apart, still clinging to my hand. 

That buggy! One wheel was dished. The body 
of it set high, spotted as a leopard where the paint 
had blistered and peeled off. There was no top— 
only a narrow iron banister at the back and sides of 
the seat. 


167 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

“I can’t get into a top buggy. The top is in the 
way when I climb in,” Mrs. Broadwick explained. 
“Climb” was the word she used. 

The harness was no better than the buggy, but 
the horse, so insecurely attached by it to the shafts, 
was a splendid contrast. He was black, sleek; he 
had a flowing satin mane and tail, both very opu¬ 
lent. And he was nearly as fat for a horse as she 
was for a woman. He was tossing his head, show¬ 
ing more vitality, I thought, than was safe under 
the circumstances. Besides if she could hardly get 
out of a chair, how could she get into this buggy ? 

“I will call Ike!” I said. 

“No, Tim knows how to do it,” she replied with a 
resigned air. 

Tim, a wiry little old negro, now approached. 
The horse let himself down hipshot on one side, 
implying that he might be here quite a while yet. 

Mrs. Broadwick reached up, caught hold of the 
dashboard and the iron rod about the seat, placed 
one foot on the step and balanced herself perilously. 
I held my breath while Tim clapped his hands on 
her and gave a slow lifting push which bent his 
knees and made his legs tremble. But he certainly 
did “know how to do it.” She landed exactly in the 
middle of the seat and filled it completely. The 
springs went down with a creaking sigh. And the 
procession moved off, the horse stepping slowly but 

168 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


still tossing his head, Mrs. Broadwick sitting aloft, 
wagging gently back and forth as she sawed on the 
reins with both hands, Tim bringing up the rear. 

“Be sure to come early, Nancy,” she called back. 

I told her that I would come early, watched her 
disappear down the road between the poplars, and 
then went back to the fire in the library. I won¬ 
dered what she could have so important to say to 
me. If she had said “tell” me I should have known 
it was gossip. But “say” was a personal-to-me 
word. I hoped she had not by any chance got me on 
her conscience, because she was the kind of woman 
who would do her duty no matter what it cost her 
or the victim of her duty. She frequently left the 
scars of her righteousness on other people. And 
she was never to be outdone by anybody. I re¬ 
called in this connection a story Mrs. Tinkham had 
told me. 

Mrs. Broadwick had been taken violently ill 
one night. A physician was hastily called from 
Cameron. 

“It was cholera morbus,” Mrs. Tinkham ex¬ 
plained. “That’s what she always has when she 
gets sick,” implying that if Mrs. Broadwick had a 
gentler nature she might choose a neater complaint. 

“The doctor says he saved her life. Mrs. Broad¬ 
wick vows he didn’t. She says he gave her warm 
soda water, which she didn’t retain. And that then 

169 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

she got better of her own accord in spite of him. 
Anyhow he sent her a bill for fifty-five dollars for 
the two calls he made. She refused to pay it. She 
wanted to know how he dared to charge her like 
that. He said he belonged to an association of doc¬ 
tors which allowed for a charge of twelve dollars 
for a night call, and one dollar a mile in addition.” 

Mrs. Tinkham gave me the apostrophe of a 
glance. 

“Now can you imagine what that woman did to 
him ? 5 

I said I could not. 

“Well, she came near to breaking him up. She 
paid for the calls quick as a flash. But she would 
not pay for the mileage. Let him measure the 
distance! Nobody knew exactly how far it was 
from Cameron to her house! The doctor gave up 
right there. But she didn’t. She had that road 
measured from her doorstep to his office. I don’t 
know how much that cost her. And she didn’t care. 
She was after him! 

“It turned out that he had charged for three miles 
more than the real distance. She docked his bill 
and paid accordingly. But that was only the be¬ 
ginning of trouble for the doctor. Most of his prac¬ 
tice is among the folks out this way. And now they 
had the measure of that road. The last one of ’em 
came back on him for overcharging on mileage! 

170 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

And them that lived on other roads took up the hue 
and cry. They called for the tapeline too. They 
would not pay their accounts until he could show a 
certified mileage slip. First and last I reckon he 
must have lost a thousand dollars. Oh, she is a 
caution! Td like to see any man get the best of 
her,” Mrs. Tinkham concluded with a laugh. 


171 


CHAPTER XIII 


The next day after lunch I set out on foot to keep 
my engagement with Mrs. Broadwick. 

The day was cold and clear. I wore a short 
brown-and-tangerine plaid skirt, a burnt-brown 
sweater, a close-fitting brown velvet hat with a 
rolled, stitched brim, golf stockings and shoes to 
match. 

Mrs. Broadwick lived on the Cameron road be¬ 
yond Big Woods. I decided to go by Redfields sta¬ 
tion rather than take the nearer way through the 
fields across the river bridge which led past Black 
Manson’s cabin. I would be innocent of this more 
convenient road. Still one could not be sure whom 
one might meet on the public highway. In view of 
this possibility I went back to the mirror, cocked 
my hat a trifle more to one side and let more truant 
red hair escape over my ear on the other side. We 
do that sometimes, the best, most modest women. 
We dare not take a chance, but if, by one of those 
subtler providences which has nothing to do with 
our heavenly fortunes, an opportunity opens we 
try to be prepared to meet it with flying feathers 
and becoming colors. 

I had seen Black Manson only once since the 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


August storm; then at a cool distance. I had been 
coming out of Tinkham’s store as he approached 
one afternoon. I furnished the coolness and he kept 
his distance. I caught his eye, let it go as if this 
were the eye of an enemy, inclined my head in the 
briefest possible acknowledgment of our acquaint¬ 
ance. He lifted his hat and changed his direction, 
striding towards Winch’s shop, though he had been 
coming to the store. I was also conscious of a smile 
somewhere on his face. It may have been a twitch 
about the corners of his mouth or the flash of his 
black eyes. Certainly I felt a stroke of humor fall 
upon me as I passed. 

I stopped at Tinkham’s store to mail a letter and 
hurried out, wondering idly what Mrs. Tinkham 
would say when she discovered that the correspond¬ 
ence between Oliver and me had ended. Oliver 
was already like one of those fading markers left 
behind in my purely romantic career. I experienced 
the pleasant excitement a woman always feels when 
she is in the position to assume the risks of another 
romance. It cannot be avoided, this high anticipa¬ 
tion in the heart of a woman. No matter how ear¬ 
nestly she devotes her energies to the sterner duties 
of life she will scan the horizon for another lover. 


173 







PART FIVE 


CHAPTER XIV 

I came to that part of the road on the edge of 
Big Woods on the opposite side from Redfields. 
The wind was blowing but not steadily. It flew 
up now and then, and with every gust the leaves 
rose like red-and-golden shadows in the sunlight. 
They whirled and capered; then when the wind 
slipped from beneath them they floated down into 
drifts like rolls of flowered tapestry. My feet 
rustled them, making a crisp, silken sound. The 
odor of them filled my nostrils, sweet and pungent. 

We have instincts which lie dormant a thousand 
years, the mere rudiments of faculties we had in the 
beginning. They never develop. They remain in¬ 
stincts. Nature keeps us provided for that primi¬ 
tive life to which we may return. When we least 
expect it, on a street, in a crowd, sitting side by side 
with a stranger—or the man you love—one of these 
little fox-eared instincts will suddenly jump up in 
your well-ordered rational mind and say “Look 
out!” Then if you are a financier you call it a 
hunch and you do not invest in the securities you 

175 




A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

were about to buy. If you are a criminal you duck 
your head and disappear. If you are a woman you 
get up and change your seat. You do, even if the 
man beside you is your husband who has sworn to 
love and cherish you. And you do not know why 
you do this. The more so because the next moment 
the sensation has passed and you go back and sit 
even nearer to him than you were before, being con¬ 
trite, amazed at this shock of fear or doubt. But 
you had it! Just so, now, at the bottom of a hill, 
something, a sound, the breaking of a twig, some 
movement in the woods, attracted my attention. I 
halted, making my feet very still in the leaves. I 
stood listening. This was not a sound. There were 
♦too many singing, fluttering, chirruping noises all 
about me. It was a feeling which startled me like a 
whisper when no one is near to whisper. I looked 
up and down the road. No one, nothing in sight 
that could account for this strange prescience. My 
gaze went deep into the woods, very dark here be¬ 
tween the breasts of the hills, and damp. Mush¬ 
rooms stood all about like parasols with vivid red- 
and-black stems, some of them tilted, showing taupe 
and pink and yellow plaiting beneath: Fungus 
flowers in a black bowl of the earth, shaded by tall 
trees, rimmed with ferns. Very pretty, I thought, 
and caught sight of a narrow path showing like a 
brown seam—so straight it was, merely touching the 

176 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

edge of this hollow—smooth and hard on the hill¬ 
side. 

All paths are seductive. They are little tunes 
that catch your feet. I had no intention of taking 
this one, knowing that it must lead to the Manson 
place; but my eye trailed it, resting here and there 
upon some splash of color, a yellow ruffle of fungus 
tipped with red upon a fallen tree. Just beyond 
there was a stone, leaning, not distinct but half con¬ 
cealed by the bolls of nearer trees. It made a dull 
blue shade against which the fungus glowed. I 
moved idly a few paces along the path, meaning to 
turn back when I had a closer view. Then I halted, 
flung up my hands with some sort of exclamation. 
The stone moved, sat up straighter. I saw that this 
was a woman crouching there. 

She sprang to her feet and turned her face to me 
—a little drawn white face with puckered lips, tear- 
stained, ringlets of dark hair falling about it 
disheveled. 

“Bonnie Armstead!” I cried. “How you fright¬ 
ened me!” 

Her lips moved, widened to a smile. Then the 
line broke, the corners went down, quivering. Her 
eyes searched me, half fearful, but with a spark in 
them. 

“I saw you coming along the road,” she began 
plaintively. “And I dropped down here until you 

177 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


should have passed. What was the harm?” raising 
her voice. 

“No harm, dear,” I returned, advancing. 

She drew back, put out her hand as if I were 
a blow against which she defended herself. 

“I didn’t want to be seen! But you did not go 
past! You came in here!” she exclaimed, her eyes 
wide and accusative. 

I regarded her. Thoughts unthinkable crowded 
in the wildest confusion through my mind. 

“Why did you come?” she demanded. “Where 
were you going?” 

I felt the red flare of anger rush over me. 

“I was on my way to see Mrs. Broadwick,” I 
answered coolly. 

“Not by this path! You know where it leads,” 
she cried. 

I turned on my heels. 

There was a quick step, and she had me by the 
sleeve. She was trembling. There was such a look 
of futile anguish upon her face as one sees on the 
pale pictures of the damned. 

“Nancy!” she whispered, “I know. I know by 
myself,” beating her breast softly with the other 
hand. “Don’t go near that man. He is terrible. 
He has a wisdom of us. He will not love, but what 
contempt! It is like a curse!” 

178 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


I undid her fingers from my sleeve, looking the 
other way. 

“You are good. I know. I can tell! There is 
no secret knowledge in your face, no fear like mine! 
You see what I am—all fears, the ghost of every 
shame. You get like that. You keep wishing for 
something. And you never can have it. No man 
will give it to you, the thing you want—love! Not 
after you have paid somewhere for love. They 
laugh. They cast their eyes like pitiless swords at 
you. So have I died a thousand times by the sword, 
Nancy. Or they are like him. At first when he 
came here he was kind to me with a fine respect. 
It was as if he restored my honor. I was careful; 
I felt like a good girl again. Then—you know— 
he must have heard something.” 

She had been leaning sidewise, trying to catch 
my averted eyes. Now she closed her own, and I 
looked at her. It was the face of a woman whom 
death has not delivered from pain. 

“I was not particular,” she began again, opening 
her eyes beseechingly. “You can’t be afterwards. 
I did everything; letters, I wrote so many letters to 
him! At last I made some excuse to go over there. 
As you are doing now. You have some explanation. 
Maybe business. You try to deceive yourself with 
that. Well, he will not believe you, Nancy! He 

179 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


—he is used to us—our ways!” she cried, dropping 
in a little heap upon the ground and covering her 
face with her hands. 

“Bonnie!” I exclaimed in deep disgust. “You 
do not, you cannot mean what you are saying—to 
me!” 

She looked up at me cunningly as if she heard 
the tinkle of her own lies. It was horrible, but I 
controlled myself. I felt obliged to leave no doubt 
of me in a mind so soiled. 

“I am on my way to see Mrs. Broadwick. I saw 
these mushrooms as I passed and came in here for 
a moment to look at this one,” indicating the yellow 
mass on the log. “I had no thought of—” 

“You do not love him then?” she asked. 

“I scarcely know him. I have every reason to 
dislike him, on account of the advantage he took of 
father in business. I almost hate him.” 

“Ah, yes, that makes no difference. Look at 
me!” she said. “I do hate him. I could kill him 
with these hands!” locking her fingers together. 

“You are morbid,” I returned. 

“You are sure you do not love him?” she insisted. 

“Don’t ask me such a question. Why should you 
dare think of it?” 

“I don’t know. It is a feeling. And I saw you 
on the bridge with him that day,” regarding me 
keenly. 


180 



A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

“What day?” I demanded, blushing. 

“The day of the storm. I was there too. I was 
waiting for him. I meant to speak to him. Then 
you came. I could not hear, but I saw you, Nancy. 
The way you looked. Another woman knows. 
Then the storm came. I nearly died. I was nearer 
the river, in the reeds. The worms crawled over 
me,” shuddering, “and I had to stay there until you 
were both gone.” 

This was too much. I took a step, avoiding her. 

“Wait, Nancy! I want to speak! Ah, I must. 
It is all in here,” pressing her hands against her 
breast. 

“What is it?” I asked coldly. 

“I have been good, except in this. It happened 
years ago, directly after you left Redfields. Since 
then it has been just one long hunger, not for love, 
but for what love could do for me. That I might 
look and feel as other women are. I have been so 
faithful in everything else. I have worked, at home, 
so hard. I have made a thousand sacrifices. And 
it was so long ago, years! Why do I feel so wicked? 
Why do not other sins damn us, only this one ? And 
only us? And I do it to myself! I feel it. And 
no prayer can redeem me. I have prayed. It only 
makes you fit for death, not life, prayers do!” she 
concluded, regarding me woefully. 

“I do not know why you tell me all this. You 

181 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


do yourself no service. And it is perfectly horrible. 
I do not deserve to know such things!” I exclaimed. 

“No,” she agreed. 

“I feel as if you had wronged me by these confi¬ 
dences.” 

“Yes, I understand. But I thought you might 
help me—tell me something that could help. You 
know the world. Maybe it is not so awful,” she 
put in. 

“It is not what you have done; it is you who are 
so awful,” I cried. 

“Yes, that’s it,” regarding me in some strange 
suspense. 

“I know no remedy for that. And now I must 
go. Mrs. Broadwick is waiting for me,” I said, 
moving off. 

“And you do not love Black Manson^” catching 
my eye as I passed. 

I made a gesture, sufficiently repellent to include 
everything. So I left her clinging to the ground, a 
fallen leaf among the fallen leaves, with that scar- 
let-tipped fungus glowing above her like the 
poisoned crown of dishonor. 

I could not bear to think of Black Manson. 
Bonnie Armstead was like a moat filled with stag¬ 
nant water that divided him from my thoughts. 
But a thousand other thoughts pursued me, as I 
hurried along the road in the bright sunshine, of 

182 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

women I had known in New York, still brazenly 
self-respecting, and not so good as Bonnie Arm¬ 
stead, nor nearly so good. How was this 4 ? Was 
self-respect a kind of fierce courage all men had 
against their own vices—and some of these women 
I had known, and doubted 4 ? 


183 


CHAPTER XV 


“You are late, child,” Mrs. Broadwick com¬ 
plained as I entered her room. 

“I walked.” 

“And the wind has blown the color out of your 
cheeks! I thought you had such a good color yes¬ 
terday.” 

It had been good enough until my encounter with 
Bonnie Armstead, I reflected. My mind was still 
sick at the stomach. 

“Lay your things on the bed and take this chair,” 
she said, watching me with a crooning eye. 

“You don’t mind my receiving you in here?” she 
went on. “I stay close and closer to my bed. I 
should never get over it if I died in the parlor. It 
is not a place where a woman of my size could give 
up her ghost comfortably.” 

“Don’t think of it. You are looking so well,” 
I laughed, dropping into the chair beside her. 

“Well, you would think of it if you were in my 
place. I am nearly as old as your father.” 

I said that I could not believe that she was. 

“And I have palpitation. Sometimes when it 
comes on I am so afraid I’ll die sitting up, or out on 

184 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


the back porch or in the parlor; not where one be¬ 
longs then, in one’s own bed!” 

This was, I discovered, an obsession with her. 
She was not afraid of death, but of “making a 
scene,” she said. 

She sat in a straight chair, her knees wide apart. 

“Do you know, I have not crossed my knees 
in years. It is a great privation not to be able to do 
so!” she said, smoothing her skirts over her enor¬ 
mous knees. She had the frankness of genius about 
everything. 

“We are not supposed to cross them,” I returned 
smiling. 

“But we do if we can, surreptitiously anyhow.” 

Then she asked me to put a piece of pine under 
the fire. I did. The blaze leaped. We sat there 
in a sort of homely, bright silence. I was sure she 
was eager to begin whatever it was she had to say, 
but she lacked the circuitous manner of arriving 
gracefully at the point of contact. It was not for 
me to aid her. There was too much at stake. She 
looked ominous, like a conscientious committee 
about to do its duty. 

“Nancy,” she began at last in her deep kind 
voice, “you know that I loved your mother.” 

“Yes, dear Mrs. Broadwick,” I answered. 

“We were girls together. There was never any¬ 
thing between us but your father.” 

185 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


“Father?” I wanted to know. 

“Yes, he was very much in love with me 
then.” 

This was news. My impression had always been 
that father carried an animus against Mrs. Broad- 
wick like a concealed weapon which he dared not 
use. 

“I was a handsome girl,” she went on simply, “but 
wilful. So was Kedie McPherson. I loved him 
but I could not endure him. He loved me, but he 
resented me more than any other living person, I do 
believe, and does to this day,” smiling grimly. 

“We were never engaged, but—I might have 
married him—and been your mother. In that case 
I doubt if you would have been a daughter. And 
you certainly should not have had that McPherson 
hair and skin! Then he fell in love with your 
mother and married her. She was pretty, and so 
gentle. The very woman for him, but I doubt, 
Nancy, I doubt very much if your father ever had 
the least talent for making a woman happy. So I 
did what I could for her. I never loved any one as 
I did your mother.” She sighed. 

“I had already married Mr. Broad wick. He was 
a good man.” 

Her tone, complacent, without even the enthusi¬ 
asm of a widow’s grief, was enough to make him 
turn over in his grave. I remembered him 

186 



A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


dimly as a small thin man who wore a yellow 
spade-shaped beard and the perpetual twinkle of 
a smile in his blue eyes. He had gone to his reward 
many years ago, leaving Mrs. Broadwick an effi¬ 
cient widow in comfortable circumstances. She was 
the kind of woman who would meddle with her cir¬ 
cumstances however comfortable. She had im¬ 
proved them by means of the double-fisted methods 
she employed in managing her farm. So many 
very intelligent women I have known had the wis¬ 
dom to conceal their wit. Mrs. Broadwick was the 
other kind. She had a brain that bristled. She 
vaunted it impudently. She acted according to 
her own judgment, no matter what the judgment or 
custom of her neighbors was. She was vehement 
intellectually, and she was formidable. 

Some such trails of thought passed through my 
mind as I listened to her now. 

“So you see, I have an interest, if not a claim on 
you,” she was saying. 

I was not so sure. Let her declare the nature of 
this mortgage, I decided, bowing amiably to her 
at the same time. 

“It is natural then that I should be concerned for 
you in your present situation; it is very grave,” she 
said. 

“Yes,” I admitted, “but I am determined not to 
w r orry.” 


187 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


“Well said, but it shows your ignorance of your¬ 
self. Women live by worrying.” 

I laughed. “You do not compliment us.” 

“I am truthful,” she said, and took me squarely 
with a look that surpassed inquisitiveness as the 
Inquisition surpassed the confessional. 

“Are you contemplating marriage?” 

“No, indeed,” I cried, laughing again. “Why 
did you think of that?” 

“Well, it is the romantic way women have of 
side-stepping their worries—and multiplying their 
responsibilities.” 

“I have no thought of marriage,” I assured her. 

“But there was a young man here to see you this 
week.” 

“Oh, Oliver Winchell, yes; I knew him in New 
York,” I admitted, coloring. 

“But you have refused him?” observing this 
color. 

“Really there is nothing between us, only a pleas¬ 
ant friendship,” I answered, endeavoring to conceal 
my annoyance behind a forced laugh. 

“I am relieved,” she said, leaning back. “You 
should marry, my dear. It is the quickest way out 
of any kind of situation for a woman if she is not 
already married. But I should not like to see you 
marry a Northern man.” 

“Why?” 


188 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


“Well, it is something like marrying a foreigner. 
They are good people but not our kind. I do not 
say that they are inferior; far from it. But they 
lack elasticity. If you ask me I should say they are 
trained out of their natural attributes. They learn 
their very emotions. They are horribly efficient, 
Nancy,” wagging her head wisely in reply to my 
shriek of laughter. 

“Yankees, my dear,” she went on, “perform the 
great menial tasks of our civilization. They have 
cold-weather energy all the year round and their 
imagination for financial affairs is sublime. They 
have the industrial temperament. It is a fearful 
thing! And they never cease to be sensible. Think 
of being married to a man who applied his mind 
to you in all the intimate domestic relations. Their 
own women stand it because they are inured—to 
that sort of thing. But you, any woman of us, 
would feel the frost of such a husband. It pro¬ 
duces a sort of rigidity of the affections. You 
couldn’t be happy, no matter how merely good he 
was to you. That goodness would be exactly like 
the allowance he made you for household expenses; 
sufficient, maybe generous, but no more. You would 
be obliged to make it do. Well, you could get no 
more love from him than that, even if you wanted 
a lot more for some emergency of your woman’s 
nature.” 


189 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


“But I have known—I have seen the happiest 
marriages ,’ 5 I interrupted. 

“Don’t talk to me, Nancy,” she came back, lift¬ 
ing her fat, red hand warningly. 

“You don’t know anything about a marriage from 
looking at it on the outside. I had a cousin who 
married a Northern man. It looked like an ideal 
union. She had a fine house, nice children. Those 
children spoke grammatically from their birth! 
They could think, too, at an early age, use their 
little minds like a pair of scissors—born trained 
animals, you see! Well, she got the feeling of 
what had happened to her at last—not a thing to 
complain of, you understand. Her husband was an 
excellent man and did his duty by her as carefully 
as he kept his accounts in business. Well, do you 
know what she told me one day"?” 

“I can’t imagine!” 

“She told me she wanted to throw herself out of 
the upstairs window!” she announced, glaring 
at me. 

“Morbid!” I returned. 

“Yes, the poor thing got hysterics from having 
life and love measured out to her according to arith¬ 
metic, and the condition of the markets and the 
science of health.” 

“What happened 4 ?” I asked. 

“Her husband died, fortunately; she relaxed, quit 

190 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


bringing up her children by a code, and some of 
them recovered. They did very well.” She spoke 
with a sort of mild satisfaction. And I perceived 
that she had not meant this for wit or sarcasm. 

“You are all wrong about Northern men as hus¬ 
bands—for Southern women,” I told her, “but you 
need have no anxiety about me. I shall never 
marry.” 

“What will you do then? Go on with your lit¬ 
erary work?” 

“I have abandoned that.” 

“You could and no great harm done to the world,” 
she agreed coolly, “but what then will you do?” 

There was such undisguised concern in her great 
homely face that I could not resent this question. 

“I shall not go back to New York, ever,” I began, 
looking into the fire at this prospect. “I—shall take 
charge of Redfields plantation—live there, you 
know,” I concluded vaguely. 

“Now, Nancy,” she began, leaning forward and 
speaking so earnestly that she startled me, “this is 
why I wanted to see you, talk to you—warn you. 
I was afraid you were about to make a mistake. I 
am glad it is not marrying the wrong man. But 
this is even worse, if possible!” 

“It is my duty.” 

“It is never a woman’s duty to make a fool of 
herself!” 


191 



A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


“Doctor Fosberry believes that I can save the 
place. He knows the situation, and he has confi¬ 
dence in my ability to do it,” I told her. 

“My dear, because that old man thinks he escorted 
you into the world is no reason why he is fit to guide 
you through it. I have known Calvin Fosberry 
since he was a boy, and I can tell you he has no 
practical sense about anything but pills and livers! 
He has made a fortune and spent the last dollar of 
it on that old place he inherited from his father, and 
now the land is so run down peas grunt when they 
sprout in his field!” 

I listened politely, wondering how people lived 
by human advice and realizing how subject by na¬ 
ture and tradition women are to it. 

Mrs. Broadwick squared herself, placed a hand 
on each knee, turned her old mottled face to me, 
pulled down the corners of her mouth, fixed her 
heavy blue eyes upon me and sighed. 

“Look at me, Nancy. Just look at me!” she com¬ 
manded. 

“And to think that I was once a lady,” she added 
dolorously. 

“Dear Mrs. Broadwick!” I protested. 

“I had fine manners and fine clothes and a waist¬ 
line,” she went on. “I could talk about other things 
besides crops. I was fond of music. I read novels 
and crocheted trimming for my petticoats. I sang 

192 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


in the choir and wore pretty shoes. I had all those 
endearing vanities that make a woman attractive. 
Ask Dr. Fosberry. He remembers me as I was then. 
And Kedie McPherson has not forgotten. That is 
why he cannot endure me now, nor at any time 
these last thirty years. Because I am so different 
in every way from the slim, laughing, spirited 
woman I was!” 

She leaned back, closed her eyes, bunched her 
brows in a heavy frown, puckered her lips, let her 
chin quiver and sniffed. Then she felt for her hand¬ 
kerchief, blew her nose violently, wiped it this way 
and that fiercely as if she despised her nose, and 
glared at me through tears. 

“And do you know how it all happened?” she 
demanded. 

Her diet, I suspected, had much to do with her 
present appearance, but this was not the answer to 
make. 

“For more than thirty years, Nancy, I have man¬ 
aged this farm,” she began. “I have given my life 
to just a piece of land. I have cared for it in all 
weathers. I have become a termagant trying to 
protect it. I have lost my temper forever. I have 
got rheumatism and hypersemia doing my duty to 
this land! My color begins to rise in March when 
the plows start and it never cools, my face does not, 
until the last wisp of hay is in, the last lock of 

193 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


cotton ginned and every nubbin of corn in the crib! 

“It takes that, my dear, to manage a farm—high 
color, high voice and a fighting eye.” 

“You do yourself an injustice,” I cried, reaching 
over to pat her hand soothingly. “You have made 
a splendid success. Every one admires you.” 

“Yes, but I don’t admire myself. And who can 
love me? If I had sold the place, invested the 
money and taken care of myself I should have been 
an elegant old woman now with a smooth skin and 
my hair crimped. I might even have married and 
had a family! At my age you will miss that more 
than anything; nobody of your own flesh and blood 
to honor you and love you,” she concluded, sighing. 

“Some morning when Tim comes in to make the 
fire he will find me rumpled up here in this chair, 
dead! That’s how it will end for me!” 

“Oh, no!” I entreated. 

“And you can’t know the sacrifices I have made 
for this land. I have never had a tenant. Tenants 
are to land what boll weevils are to cotton. They 
eat it up. You lease it for a year and they take 
three years’ life out of it making that one crop. 
Then they leave and go somewhere else to murder 
the land. I had a mind to all that. I have always 
hired labor and managed the place myself. And I 
know by a lifetime’s hardships how exacting the 
land is. It wears you out; nothing is left of you.” 

194 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

“But so much courage and honor,” I added 
gently. 

“Oh, yes, I have my virtues and a comfortable 
income,” she returned, with a flash of humor. “But 
virtues in a woman, Nancy, are like her complexion; 
she must keep them soft and pretty. Mine have 
become as homely and harsh as—I am. And you do 
not know, my dear, how many times I have regretted 
my principle!” 

I let out a shriek of laughter. 

“Yes,” she insisted, smiling ruefully, “I am tired 
of being intelligent, efficient, conscientious and in¬ 
dustrious. If I could only give up and lie on a 
couch in a fine silk something, and have hysterics 
like a woman, it would be such a relief. But I 
never can! 

“Be sensible, Nancy. Don’t give your life in 
vain. Exchange it for love, something that can 
talk back to you. The land never says ‘Thank 
you.’ A husband is often difficult, but there is not 
a thousand acres of him to be clothed and trained 
and kept and fed. Besides, you always have the 
satisfaction of knowing that you can flunk and leave 
him with the bag to hold until you feel better. He 
is bound to go on cherishing you, but the land will 
not. It has no responsibilities. You are responsible 
to it for every wash and flood that damages it.” 

She went on in this vein until at last I promised 

195 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


to think it over, merely to humor her. Then I got 
up to put on my things, saying that I must hurry 
home to father. I thought she still had a sort of 
memorial interest in father. 

I was pinning my hat before the mirror when 
she surprised me with this: 

“Do you know Mr. Manson, Nancy ?” 

“I have met him,” I answered coolly. 

“He is a nice man.” 

I could see her face in the mirror. She was 
watching me with a sort of secret attention as if 
she had one foot of her old setter mind raised, scent¬ 
ing my hidden thoughts. 

I did not deny that Mr. Manson was a nice man, 
but I would not affirm that he was. My silence 
merely implied that whatever he was made no dif¬ 
ference to me. 

“He comes here very often. I like him.” 

I snatched off my hat, gave the crown a punch, 
pulled down the brim and put it on again with the 
air of a woman who kicks the cat because she is dis¬ 
pleased about something else. 

“I want you to know him,” Mrs. Broadwick 
went on. 

This was too much. The very name of him put 
me in pain where a woman cannot admit that she 
suffers. 

“I know more of him now than I like,” I retorted. 

196 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


“What, for example ?” 

“He has got Big Woods and he hopes to get what 
remains of Redfields. But he never shall have it!” 
I exclaimed. 

“So that is why you are putting up the fight to 
save the place.” 

I stood with my chin up, buttoning my sweater. 

“After all, that may not be such a bad idea,” she 
said after a pause. 

I shot a glance at her. She was staring at the 
fire. Her whole expression had changed. It was 
that of one who hears news, digests it swiftly and 
wittily and finds it pleasant. The smile was con¬ 
cealed, but I felt that in her mere mind she was smil¬ 
ing with satisfaction. 

I was irritated, not intelligently but emotionally. 
My color flamed when I bent to give her the faint¬ 
est touch of a kiss and was caught for an instant by 
the calm blue omniscience of her gaze. 

She wanted me to come again soon. I told her 
I would come. If I needed advice she would be glad 
to give it, she said. I told her how much I would 
appreciate her advice and hurried out. 

I resisted the temptation to slam the front door, 
but when I was on the road again I unbuttoned my 
sweater. I was still warm with an inexplicable 
anger. What offended me was not the way she had 
discouraged me and advised against my wish to keep 

197 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

Redfields, but it was the sudden change in her mind 
toward this plan when she discovered my antago¬ 
nism to Black Manson. Why that lean, keen specu¬ 
lative smile on her fat face as if she could foretell 
the conclusion of such a performance*? She could 
not wish me to fail, once I was committed to the 
adventure. The old cat! She was thinking 
thoughts that did not belong to her. With that I 
clapped down some hatchway that led to my deeper 
mind where all the prophets of a woman’s life dwell 
and work out her future for her long before she gets 
to the top, daytime knowledge of it herself. Mrs. 
Broadwick seemed to me now in some kind of tele¬ 
pathic communication with these inside prophets. 
Well, I concluded, walking faster, one could outdo 
her own fate in spite of prophets and meddlesome 
counselors. I was tired of being urged not to do 
what I was determined to do. If only the biogra¬ 
pher of Job had smacked a damaging and critical 
Scripture onto his three discouraging friends that 
I might quote it to mine! In this connection I ven¬ 
ture to add that many a man who gives sensible ad¬ 
vice is no better than an obstructionist who wants 
you to take the road he took through life, which is 
bound to lead to the past and not into the future, 
where you belong. He jumps up before you just as 
you are getting up the right speed and shouts to 
you to go back, take the other road to the right. 

198 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


And if you are timid enough to fear your own pre¬ 
destined future you do turn back, take the other 
road, only to find another graybeard waving you 
down, telling you there is a bad place ahead, im¬ 
passable. He wants you to turn back and take the 
road behind you to the right, you understand. So 
you spend your life going to the right in a circle, 
and you never get anywhere. This is my candid 
opinion of the worth of most people who are free 
with advice. I wonder if there is one successful 
man or woman who has not had similar experiences 
with them. They are frequently good teachers of 
morals, even when they have themselves been Solo¬ 
mons, but they are the least valorous leaders in this 
world to deeds that make the world live and shine. 

The keen freshness of the wind which was blow¬ 
ing steadily now restored my good humor. There 
was no one in sight on this road. I had that per¬ 
sonal private sense of liberty which we feel only 
when we think we are alone. I took off my hat. I 
felt a little like Cuthullen’s daughter with all the 
younger locks of my hair flying in this wind. You 
must have observed this if you have seen much of 
women. The oppressed woman always binds her 
hair close and keeps her head covered. Hidden hair 
is a sign of bondage with them. But let any one 
of us have a sense of freedom, a fine emotion, a mo¬ 
ment of high happiness, and the last one of us in- 

199 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


stinctively gives our hair to the sun and the wind, 
as some birds sing only when their wings are 
spread. We may not do it, if you are present; but 
I say we wish to do it, especially if we have much 
hair, whether it is golden or the black veil of our 
fairness. So I walked briskly now, humming a quick 
little tune, feeling the wind pluck at the curls on 
my head. 

Presently I came to a wider reef of leaves beside 
the road. I struck into them with trailing feet. I 
did a fancy step or two by the tune I was singing. 
I moved faster, whirling round and round until I 
was in the midst of a cone of flying leaves which 
trailed to the windward high above my head. 
Breathless at last, I stood watching them sail and 
fall. It was then, facing the way over which I had 
already come, that I caught sight of a man also 
standing still. At the same moment I saw him 
strike his hands together. The faint smacking sound 
of his applause reached me as I clapped my hat on, 
turned and started off. At first I walked sedately, 
not too fast, implying that whoever this was on 
the road behind me he should not have been there. 
He had eavesdropped my feet in those leaves. Then 
out of the startled confusion of my senses I recog¬ 
nized this man, who was too far away for his face 
to be more than a blur. But by his unusual height, 
by that singular lift of his head above the heavy 

200 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


shoulders and long arms I knew that this must be 
Black Manson. My hope was that he had not rec¬ 
ognized me. Still I became a fiery furnace of self- 
consciousness. My face flamed. I walked faster. 
If I kept ahead he would not know what girl this 
was making a fool of herself dancing on the public 
highway. I quickened my pace. Above everything 
I must not seem willing to be overtaken. I length¬ 
ened my stride and resisted the impulse to break 
into a run. My heart was pounding. He must 
know by the rate I was going that I wished to avoid 
him, I reflected breathlessly. He might be far in 
the rear by this time. If only I dared look back! 
And I did not dare. Then I heard the measured 
tread of feet behind me. 

The next moment Black Manson passed, lifting 
his hat without a word or a glance, and went on 
with a long swinging stride twice the length of 
mine. 

I halted, staring indignantly at his back. He was 
showing me the ease with which he could outdis¬ 
tance me; also letting me know that my haste was 
unwarranted vanity, since his purpose was not to 
overtake me but to pass me. I do think men, any 
man, have more ways of embarrassing or provoking 
a woman than the most perverse one of us alive! 

Meanwhile my own mind went off like a rocket. 
It was imperative that I should discuss a certain 

201 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


matter with Manson. Here was the opportunity 
afforded by chance, and I had behaved like a silly 
girl instead of a sensible business woman! 

“Oh, Mr. Manson!” I called, hurrying after him. 

He faced about suddenly as if he had been ex¬ 
pecting to be hailed, and advanced to meet me. 

“Ah, good afternoon, Miss McPherson! It is 
you. I was not sure,” he said, regarding me with 
what I felt was a sort of malicious gravity. 

“Yes,” endeavoring to speak calmly in spite of 
being still practically breathless. “I have been 
wanting to see you—that is, I must see you on a 
matter of business,” I stammered, furiously angry 
with myself for not being able to avoid the verb 
“to see” in this connection. 

“What can I do for you?” 

“Oh, nothing,” I retorted quickly. “It is about 
the mortgage you hold on Redfields.” 

He regarded me with an impersonal business 
look, as much as to say, “Yes, he had the mort¬ 
gage; what about it?” 

“The interest, it was paid last year?” I asked, 
hoping against hope that it might have been paid. 

“No, your father and I had an understanding 
about that. He needed the money, he said. 
Wanted to buy a tractor, I believe.” 

“Yes, he bought it,” I returned dryly, remember¬ 
ing this tractor, standing now with a mass of huge 

202 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

plows and harrows beneath the tool shed, which had 
proved an unprofitable investment because there 
was no one at Redfields who knew how to farm with 
a tractor. 

“Well, the interest will be paid. This was what 
I wanted to tell you,” I said. 

We walked on in silence, coming down the hill at 
the bottom of which the path turned into the Big 
Woods where I had encountered Bonnie earlier in 
the afternoon. 

“There may be some delay,” I began again. 
“Father’s illness—I am just now getting hold of 
things.” 

“I understand,” he answered briefly. 

“This year’s interest will also be paid,” I in¬ 
formed him. 

I do not know if we have a purely animal instinct 
against the paying of interest, and probably taxes, 
or if I felt resentful because I was obliged to pay 
it to a man who, I felt, had wronged me; or if it 
was because he halted at the opening between the 
trees where the path began; but it is certain that I 
experienced at this moment a resentment keen as a 
pain that brings the blood to one’s cheeks. 

“It really makes no difference,” he said. “The 
land, Redfields, will be good for the interest even 
if it is not paid at all when the mortgage is due at 
the end of another year.” 

203 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


His manner and tone had changed. He stood 
with his hat off, regarding me with the teasing 
sparkle in his eye a man shows only to a woman, 
not to another man with whom he does business 
however harshly. 

“I shall be able by that time not only to take up 
the mortgage, but I expect to be in a position to 
recover Big Woods,” I retorted, giving him a cat¬ 
spitting glance for his sparkle. 

“It will not be for sale,” he said with the wit of a 
smile deepening the lines about his mouth. 

“Not for what it is really worth 4 ?” 

“Not for any price—to you.” He said this with 
a quick ferocity which was the more offensive be¬ 
cause I felt that it was not an expression of enmity 
but the enigmatical triumph of a man who is deter¬ 
mined to beat you in the game for the fun of the 
thing. 

I stared at him. He returned this look mildly, 
dropped his eyes with a sort of increased interest to 
my hands. I realized only then that they were 
clinched fists. If I am deeply moved I must take 
refuge in either tears or laughter. 

“Oh, I wish you were dead, I cannot bear you!” 
I cried, turning and starting off before these tears 
betrayed me, leaving Black Manson standing bare¬ 
headed, smiling in the polite attitude of bowing like 
a man who has just received a gratifying confidence. 

204 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

It is not the thoughts we think, nor any deed 
we do, however regrettable, but it is some feeling we 
have, strong and involuntary, that humbles us most 
in secret. I suffered some such defeat as this, bit¬ 
terer to bear than all the vicissitudes I faced in the 
undertaking before me. 


205 


CHAPTER XVI 


More than a thousand acres remained of Redfields 
plantation. At the prices land sold that summer 
in McPherson County I knew the place must be 
worth near three hundred thousand dollars. My 
confidence in the future was based upon that most 
ephemeral of all things, a land boom. Nothing 
should be easier, I believed, than to borrow what 
I needed to pay the interest on the mortgage and 
finance the place another year. 

But when I went into the markets about the 
middle of October to negotiate for the relatively 
modest sum of fifteen thousand dollars it was not 
to be had. In the first place nobody would lend 
on a second mortgage; not even the Federal Land 
Banks. In the second place the land boom was 
gone. Now land could not be sold at any reason¬ 
able price. Money was “tight,” I was told. Only 
the lawyers now were doing a thriving business in 
bankruptcy cases resulting from the inflated sales 
earlier in the summer, because with the failure of 
the crops and the hoarding of money and the general 
unrest, these men who had purchased land could not 
meet their obligations. Merchants, pressed to pay 
their accounts with the brokers and wholesale corn- 

206 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

panies, in turn pressed and sued the farmers who 
were unable to pay their bills. The thousand 
dollars I had deposited in Cameron barely met the 
more urgent demands of father’s creditors for sup¬ 
plies bought during the year. 

There is no valor like the valor of ignorance. 
Now, with a sinking knowledge of my financial con¬ 
dition and without being able either to borrow or 
obtain credit, my courage failed me. I had visions 
of being sued by a certain importunate fertilizer 
company. I was in the midst of a personally con¬ 
ducted panic, keeping up a brave front only because 
I would not add humiliation to my anxieties by 
confessing defeat. 

One day late in this same month of October I 
received a letter from Katherine Lock. I had known 
her in New York as a young, ambitious art stu¬ 
dent who had no talent and plenty of money. 
She paid her way handsomely in our set with de¬ 
lightful little dinners. She had no judgment about 
literature, art or music. She liked everything writ¬ 
ten, painted or sung by any of us. She was amus¬ 
ingly popular. And for many of us it was a sort 
of financial tragedy when she married Hamilton 
Lock, a young industrial engineer “with a future.” 
But we admitted that this was the only sensible 
thing she had ever done. 

I had had occasional letters from her during the 

207 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

three years that had passed since her marriage, 
always from a different part of the country, where 
her husband had taken a contract for some industrial 
corporation—usually somewhere in the Far West. 
This letter, however, came from Atlanta. 

She wrote that they had been there for nearly a 
year where Mr. Lock had a position with a com¬ 
pany salvaging one of the great government war 
plants built to make powder, but that they would 
leave soon for Arkansas. “Hamilton has discovered 
something perfectly wonderful and is going into 
business for himself,” she explained. And it was a 
settled fact that he could not fail to make his for¬ 
tune within a year or two. 

After giving this sketch of her present happiness 
and future anticipations with which her letters in¬ 
variably began, she said that “poor Oliver” had 
called to see them on his way back to New York, 
else she should not have known that I had returned 
to Redfields. I inferred from the “poor Oliver” tone 
of this sentence that he had confided in her, prob¬ 
ably from force of habit. We all did. And so she 
was writing to ask me to come to her for the follow¬ 
ing week-end. 

“You need the change, my dear,” she concluded, 
“and it would be simply wonderful to have you. 
We are giving a little dinner at the club Saturday 
evening. There is always dancing afterwards. 

208 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

From what Oliver tells me it will do you good to 
dance. I remember how you loved it. Besides, we 
shall have another guest that evening, an old col¬ 
lege mate of Hamilton’s. He is just crazy to meet 
you. Not that that makes any difference to you. 
If you have refused Oliver you must have taken 
vows to remain a spinster—but I do want this man 
to meet you, if only to verify some of the fine tales 
we have been telling him about you. And you 
might take one more fling, dear Nancy, if it is true 
what Oliver tells us about the way you plan to 
sacrifice your life, your beauty and your complexion 
to farm Redfields plantation! I will not tell you 
the name of the victim I am offering you. But he 
is fearfully rich, a bachelor, and the most magnifi¬ 
cent-looking man you ever saw. He is a Virginian 
really. But ten years ago he sold his estate there, 
came to New York and made a fortune in real 
estate. When we entered the war he closed up his 
business, obtained a commission as captain in the 
army and saw service in France. When he came 
home things were so unsettled, income taxes, that 
sort of thing discouraged him, he told Hamilton. 
He decided not to go back into business for a few 
years. He simply disappeared. And Hamilton had 
no idea what had become of him until they met 
quite by accident here in Atlanta this summer. 
Since then he comes in frequently for the week- 

209 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


end. But he will not tell us even yet where he 
lives; only that he has a country place in Georgia 
and may never go back to New York. Now doesn’t 
all this sound interesting? Do send me a wire say¬ 
ing that you will come!” 

I decided to accept this invitation, inspired by the 
same spirit of desperation which sometimes drives 
a man to go on a spree when some of his founda¬ 
tions are slipping either in business or in his more 
intimate personal affairs. I must have a change of 
scene, if only for a day. My only objection to the 
invitation was that Katherine had padded it with 
this incredibly eligible bachelor. But she was in¬ 
curably romantic and must always be doing Cupid’s 
errands for him, a gratuitous service for which she 
was not always thanked. 


210 


CHAPTER XVII 


Katherine was the same slender, pretty little 
thing I remembered. She had autumnal coloring: 
dark hair, brown eyes, olive skin with a radiant 
flush. She is a sort of bead-bearing woman, as 
distinguished from other women who only wear 
beads. What I mean is that they seemed to grow 
on her, as brightly colored berries hang from 
shrubs in the autumn. She was inclined to skip 
when she walked, and she had the same mental 
habit when she talked, frisking from one topic to 
another, cheerfully incoherent, letting out little 
shrieks of laughter when there was barely enough 
amusement present to win a smile from duller, 
saner people. 

She received me with all these pretty manners 
and noises when I arrived on an earlier train than 
she had expected me. 

“Nancy!” she cried, embracing me and then in¬ 
specting me, still swinging to me by my hands. 
“What have you been doing to yourself! You are 
younger, positively girlish, thin! I was so anxious 
after what Oliver told me.” 

I did not ask her what Oliver had said, following 

211 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


her to the room I was to have and allowing her to 
help me take off my wraps. When I removed my 
hat she shrieked. 

“What have you been doing to your hair? It is 
lighter, like red gold,” she cried. 

“I have been burning it going bareheaded in the 
sun,” I told her, flushing. 

“And what an accommodating complexion you 
have. Really, Nancy, you do look fresh!” she 
added, noticing this color. 

I was pleased, stimulated from having gone so 
long without the pretty speeches of the world. Na¬ 
ture pays no compliments. I had grown modest, 
sensitive to praise, during these last anxious, silent 
months at Redfields. 

We had lunch together. Katherine wanted to 
know delicately, as she was uncertain whether she 
touched a wound or a sword, whether it really was 
“all off” between Oliver and me. I said it was. 

“You no longer love him, or did you quarrel?” 

“We did not quarrel and I no longer even like 
him,” I replied. 

She regarded me with a sort of enterprising “well 
then” expression and began to extol the “wonderful 
man” who was so anxious to meet me. 

“He is positively formidable, he is so good-look¬ 
ing. And such repose of manner! You will know 
at a glance that he is really somebody. And isn’t it 

212 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

mysterious that he will not tell where he lives. 
Even Hammie doesn’t know.” 

I told her I thought it was more than mysterious 
—doubtful. 

“Oh no, there is nothing doubtful about—” 

She clapped a hand over her mouth and gig¬ 
gled. 

“I nearly called his name,” she exclaimed, “and 
I promised I would not do that.” 

“Whom did you promised” 

“The man himself,” she admitted, then seeing 
possibly a trace of irritation I felt at being thrust 
into what appeared to be a sillily sentimental sit¬ 
uation, she added hastily: “But he is the finest ever, 
Nancy. Hammie has known him for years; only a 
bit queer, I imagine.” 

“He may as well remain incognito, so far as I 
am concerned.” 

“Well, of course, he does not know you; only 
your name and the things I told him. He is very 
much interested. He asks the funniest questions; 
whether I remembered if you cried easily. I told 
him certainly not, that you always made the other 
fellow cry. And if you were very intelligent about 
business. Wasn’t that absurd? I told him that 
you had no sense at all except romantic sense and 
a woman’s shrewdness in dealing with lovers.” 

“Oh, you told him that!” I complained. 

213 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


“Of course. I didn’t want him to think he was 
going to meet a flapper.” 

“Well, it doesn’t matter, except that I am sorry 
you have gossiped about my past,” I said. 

“Your past, Nancy!” 

“Because I am no longer interested in—men.” 

“My goodness!” she exclaimed, clasping her 
hands and staring at me. Then she threw her head 
back and laughed. 

“Tell that to some one who-does not know you,” 
she cried. “You could no more give up men, taking 
lovers as you go, than you could change the color 
and candor of your singing blue eyes or take the 
curl out of your hair!” 

“Now tell me about this discovery Mr. Lock has 
made,” I said, determined to change the subject. 
“Or is it a secret 4 ?” 

44 Yes, it is a secret in a way. So of course Ham- 
mie would never tell me. But it has to do with the 
potato.” 

I could not associate an industrial engineer with 
this menial vegetable. But I concealed my disap¬ 
pointment and asked her which potato. 

“Sweet,” she informed me. 

44 You know,” she went on with a serious air, “the 
sweet potato as a food product is not valuable be¬ 
cause it is so sensitive to cold, cannot be kept in 
condition for the markets. Well, Hammie has dis- 

214 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

covered a process by which they may be kept in¬ 
definitely.” 

“The Government has long advocated dehydrated 
sweet potatoes,” I returned dryly. 

“Oh, dried sweet potatoes, you mean,” she ex¬ 
claimed scornfully. “This is entirely different, 
Nancy. That is the marvel of it. By Hammie’s 
process you can cure sweet potatoes, as they are, 
sweet and juicy, in four days, and in three weeks 
they are ready for the markets. You can ship them 
over land anywhere, across seas and they will not 
spoil. You can cure a hundred thousand bushels 
in one drying house and sell them in carload lots 
to brokers all winter.” 

I had my doubts and showed that I did. 

“Oh, Hammie has proved it. He sent potatoes 
to France last winter. They arrived in perfect 
condition. Think of what that means. Cheaper 
food for poor people everywhere, and such good 
food. Suppose he had them to ship this year to 
Russia! It is a sure thing. The brokers are con¬ 
vinced. They are clamoring for Hammie’s pota¬ 
toes. Next year he will have hundreds of thou¬ 
sands of bushels for the markets. They are build¬ 
ing the curing houses in Arkansas now. And turn¬ 
ing the land, five hundred acres this year, more next 
year. There will be hundreds of thousands of 
bushels. We shall be rich, I tell you.” 

215 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

I said I hoped so. 

“You should hear Hammie talk about it. He 
will tell you everything except how he cures them. 
I know this much: It costs fifty cents to produce a 
bushel of sweet potatoes and get it to the market. 
They sell for from a dollar and fifty to five dollars 
a bushel according to the season. And you can raise 
from three hundred to six hundred bushels on an 
acre of suitable land. Just count it for yourself, 
what the profits would be on only a hundred acres. 
I can’t do so large a sum in my head. And no in¬ 
vestment of capital after the first year when he 
must build his curing plant.” 

I should have been more impressed with this fairy 
tale of fortune in the sweet potato if a man had 
told it, but coming from the pretty pink lips of 
Katherine it sounded absurd. 

She said we must go downtown and do some 
shopping now. It would do me good to see the 
busy streets, and the pretty things. And would I 
mind waiting while she had her hair dressed? She 
had an engagement for that afternoon at four 
o’clock. So we went in Katherine’s fine car. And 
it was refreshing—the stirring crowds on the pave¬ 
ments, the displays in the shop windows; but for 
some reason I felt strangely removed from all this 
noise and bustle, as if far within a silence had settled 
upon me. Also, my mind continually reverted to 

216 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


this plan for preserving and marketing sweet pota¬ 
toes. While I sat in the car waiting for Katherine 
at the hairdresser’s I thought about what might be 
done in this way at Redhelds. That hundred acres 
of cotton land around the station. I had often 
heard father say it would produce wonderful pota¬ 
toes. When you are in desperate straits financially 
you are ready to consider any proposition, whatever 
the risk. I resolved to draw Hamilton Lock out on 
this potato business. Not once during the afternoon 
did my mind revert to the mysterious man I was to 
meet that evening at dinner. And when we came 
home at six o’clock I had time only to exchange 
greetings with Mr. Lock before Katherine whisked 
me off to dress for this dinner. 


217 




PART SIX 


CHAPTER XVIII 

I do not claim that every woman is an artist; far 
from it. But every one of them is born with some 
kind of artistic instinct, even if it is a barbaric in¬ 
stinct, for dressing herself when the occasion appeals 
to her vanity. But the more she becomes involved 
with the plain elemental virtues, duties and anxie¬ 
ties of life the less assertive this instinct becomes. I 
have known brilliant leaders among women who 
kept their personal vanities well nourished to the 
last with elegant and tasteful toilets, and who died 
with their hair curled, because this grooming was 
essential to the position they held in society or on 
the rostrum of our recent political and public af¬ 
fairs. But I have yet to see the mistress of a home 
and the mother of children who is not comfortably 
divorced from her duties by servants and a nurse 
that retained an ardent interest in her mere clothes 
or her personal appearance. Her vanities change to 
a sort of sacrificial pride in her home and family. 
If one of us gets a serious ambition to achieve 
some success that depends upon our own work, it 

219 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


invariably destroys these lighter feminine vanities. 
This is why a certain distinguished woman writer 
in this country looks like a frump, although she 
can dress the heroine of her story as thrillingly as if 
she employed a Parisian modiste for this business. 
And half a million women will bear me witness that 
a woman may become the controlling factor in the 
whole Federation of Women’s Clubs in this coun¬ 
try who always appears dressed like an Irish cook on 
her afternoon out. 

I suppose some such evolution of vanity was al¬ 
ready taking place in me. For I took no more time 
to make a toilet for this dinner with the Locks than 
I took any busy day at Redfields. What I mean 
is that I was not provocatively and femininely in¬ 
terested in myself. While I brushed and braided my 
hair—binding it close to my head as usual—my 
thoughts reverted constantly to the problems that 
faced me at Redfields. How could I possibly ob¬ 
tain the money to pay the interest due on the mort¬ 
gage*? What plan could be made for the coming 
year that would require the least possible capital *? 

In this mood I put on the frock I was to wear 
that evening. It belonged to the dinner-gown 
period of my career in New York, but it was a de¬ 
mure little gown, of palest apple-green satin, draped 
in the thinnest web of lace, edged and spangled with 
tiny iridescent beads. The bodice was cut low, and 

220 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


I wore an old cameo with the white-veiled head of a 
Madonna on it raised above the pink shell. The 
skirt was short and pouched at the bottom, but it 
was not so discourteously brief as skirts became 
later, showing only the slender inches of my ankles 
in pale gossamer green stockings above silver 
slippers. 

I was standing before the fire drawing on a pair 
of long gloves when Katherine called to me from 
the hall: 

“Are you ready, Nancy 4 ?” and whisked in before 
I had time to answer. 

“Oh, you precious, lovely thing!” she cried. 
“Where did you get that frock 4 ? Not here!” 

“No, it is one of Lucile’s models; old now,” I 
answered. 

“Well, it is sweet. The lace is like a cobweb 
with the dew on it spun over young green leaves,” 
she said, advancing to make a closer inspection. 

“But I must say you are bolder than the rest of 
us,” she laughed with her eyes raised now to my 
face. 

“How, bold?” I wanted to know. 

“We rouge. All of us do. And you have not 
rouged. It is like not putting on all your clothes 
—noticeable,” she explained. 

“Still, I shall not rouge,” I announced. 

“Oh, you do not need it now. Really you do 

221 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


not, with that fresh color of your own. The ques¬ 
tion is, will it last through the evening. I should 
be as pale as a ghost,” she explained anxiously, 
meaning that this evening would be no time to 
fade. 

An hour later we joined that garland of women 
always to be seen ascending and descending the 
broad staircase of a fashionable city club at the din¬ 
ner hour. Katherine scanned the groups of men 
standing below. 

“Hammie promised to wait for us at the bottom 
of the stairs, and I don’t see him,” she murmured 
querulously. 

“Ah, there they are,” she exclaimed, as we reached 
the last step. 

“Where 4 ?” I asked, casting a glance around. 

“The two men standing beside the pillar to the 
left. The very tall one has his back turned this 
way—ah, Hammie sees us.” 

I had one glimpse of Lock advancing to meet us 
as my eyes passed him and rested upon the man who 
accompanied him. At the same moment my heart 
plunged and went over a precipice somewhere in¬ 
side me. It was an act of dizzy courage to take 
without wavering the lightning stroke of a smile 
that flashed in the eyes and across the face of this 
man and then disappeared as they came nearer. 

Lock made a signal to his wife, evidently in re- 

222 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

gard to the table he had chosen in an alcove on the 
other side of the room. She hurried forward to 
pass judgment on whether this was the most desir¬ 
able table available, at the same time putting out 
her hand in friendly welcome to her other guest. 
Then the three of them came back to me. 

“Nancy,” Katherine chirruped, “I want to pre¬ 
sent Mr. Manson. Miss McPherson, Black,” she 
added with a pretty, intimate air of triumph. 

There was a pause so brief as not to be observed 
by our hosts, during which I read and answered 
the question in Black Manson’s eye: “Shall we con¬ 
fess and turn the laugh on them 

“I never knew you,” was the meaning of my coolly 
polite stare. 

“Very well then,” he seemed to say with the bow 
he made, which was the only part of this conversa¬ 
tion witnessed by the Locks. Then we made the 
usual responses from the ritual of polite manners to 
each other. 

“Now you two come along,” Hamilton Lock in¬ 
terrupted. “There has been a mistake about the 
tables. Another party has the one I reserved. We 
must hurry if we get this one. I am taking it from 
another fellow who ordered it for half past seven. 
He is late. But if he comes in before we get it we 
may be obliged to wait. Lot of people dining here 
to-night.” 


223 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


All this flung back over his shoulder as we fol¬ 
lowed slowly through the gathering crowd. 

I was too experienced not to know that our pas¬ 
sage attracted attention. My escort not only tow¬ 
ered head and shoulders above everybody else; he 
was also the most distinguished-looking man in the 
room. And I at least was a stranger worth the in¬ 
terest of a glance, walking beside him with my gaze 
held straight before me, feeling the color deepening 
in my cheeks as I became angrily aware of being 
studied from above, so to speak, by the turn of 
Manson’s head and the bending of his eyes upon me. 

Presently we halted, waiting for the Locks, who 
were being detained by some people. 

“Do you mind so much?” Black Manson asked in 
an undertone. 

“It was a trick of course,” I returned coolly. 
“Katherine should have told me.” 

“She did not know—that is, she did not know—” 

“She is always innocent of her worst deed,” I 
interrupted. 

“She really is, this time,” he insisted and went on 
smiling, “I have known the Locks a long time. 
When I am in town I usually see them. One eve¬ 
ning two weeks ago they had dinner with me here 
at the club. Katherine was vastly excited—you 
know how she is. She had just heard, she said, that 
Nancy McPherson was at Redfields. Followed a 

224 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


reel of gossip about you, very charming, very inter¬ 
esting. I did not tell her that I was, topographi¬ 
cally speaking, your nearest neighbor. She was 
planning to have you up for this week-end. 5 ’ 

He glanced at me and hesitated, offering a sort 
of apologetic smile which was also sneakingly mis¬ 
chievous. 

“Well?” in a tone meant to be unfavorable. 

“I intimated that I expected to be in town that 
week-end,” he admitted. 

“She took the hint and extended me this invita¬ 
tion. That is all, except that I suggested she should 
not mention me to you. It was my only chance 
to meet you on neutral ground,” he concluded. 

We moved off again in the wake of the Locks, 
who had at last escaped their friends. I did not tell 
him that he had been the chief topic of Katherine’s 
letter, that she had enhanced him with mystery and 
endowed him with every attribute that appeals to a 
woman’s fancy. I was merely thinking angrily how 
mischievously romantic she had been at my expense. 

She and Lock were now waiting for us with four 
other people. 

“This is at least a truce?” my escort entreated 
hurriedly. 

“Oh, it must be under the circumstances,” I 
agreed in the armistice tone of cruelly polite society. 

The next moment we were being introduced to 

225 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

the other guests invited to this dinner party. It 
was characteristic of Katherine not to tell me she 
was entertaining six people instead of two. And I 
was left to discover during the evening that they 
were local celebrities. Mr. Walton was an official 
in the Federal Loan Bank. His wife was a promi¬ 
nent club woman. Whitsett was an editorial writer 
on one of the papers. And Miss Redmond had long 
since seen her best days as a beauty and was now 
going in for dramatic readings, which probably ac¬ 
counted for the mixture of tragic and lyrical lines in 
her small withered face. 

When we were seated at the table the usual un¬ 
conscious mental wrestling began among the guests, 
while the host and hostess urged each competitor on, 
inspired by the fear that a silence might fall and 
this become one of those terrible things, a dull din¬ 
ner party. Mrs. Walton had just returned from a 
meeting of the state federation. And she was de¬ 
termined to tell what women were doing and plan¬ 
ning to do, which for some reason is never interest¬ 
ing information unless you are interested in fem¬ 
inine politics. But Lock, who had her on his right 
hand, professed to be tremendously impressed by 
these activities. I heard him tell her that he had 
no doubt in time women would control political 
affairs in this country as they were now responsible 
for its domestic health and happiness. “Politics is 

226 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


simply housekeeping on a national scale,” he said. 
She accepted this flattery without considering that 
almost any well-bred man at the head of his own 
table will perjure himself to the wind in a woman’s 
sails. Walton was discussing duck shooting with 
Katherine. He was a plain man with no attributes; 
merely hard-earned business qualifications which 
had made him rich and brought him into the mildly 
sporting element of society. Like so many men of 
his class he had taken up duck shooting late in life 
by way of acquiring correct material for polite con¬ 
versation—as his wife had gone in for club work. 
The Redmond girl was telling Whitsett why she 
preferred popular audiences to parlor audiences. 

“An art which depends upon emotional expres¬ 
sion, as mine does, may be destroyed in a moment by 
a coldly critical atmosphere. And parlor audiences 
are very critical. I have died many times before a 
company of high-browed club women in somebody’s 
drawing-room!” 

“You don’t tell me so,” Whitsett returned solici¬ 
tously. 

“And I have lived with every atom of my being 
before a mixed audience of the common people, big 
rough man and plain woman,” she added in deep- 
toned eloquence which caught the ears of the com¬ 
pany. There was a slight inward chill of embar¬ 
rassment, as always happens when a woman speaks 

227 



A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

of her “being” even if she does not include “every 
atom of it.” But a certain neurasthenic class of 
them will do it. This is a little queer when you 
consider that a man, even if he is a nervous wreck, 
never refers to his mere being. Still Whitsett made 
a mewing sound through his nose designed to ex¬ 
press sympathy. But he was obviously straining at 
the leash in the effort to escape into the neighboring 
discussion of duck shooting. And Mrs. Walton, 
who had caught the comment on club women, 
snapped Miss Redmond a glance, as much as to say 
she would attend to her so soon as she had finished 
what she was saying to Mr. Lock. 

Manson and I were without the substance from 
which open and aboveboard conversations are made. 
This became obvious to the other guests, as people 
on the bank may at the same moment see two 
swimmers about to sink. One after another they 
tossed us a line. Mrs. Walton fixed her fine rostrum 
eyes on me and asked if I had been drawn into the 
vortex of the feminist movement in New York. I 
told her no, that very few vortexes had ever ap¬ 
pealed to me. There was a laugh, and having done 
her duty by me, she went back to her persecution of 
poor Lock. Then Walton caught Black Manson’s 
eye and wanted to know if it was true that Mr. 
Manson had gone in seriously for farming. 

“Well, not too seriously. I have simply changed 

228 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


my scenes. Like country life. A man is never really 
a native of any land unless he owns some of it. 
Can’t say I have gone further than that,” he replied. 

This led to a general discussion of what the psy¬ 
chological effects of owning land and property 
would have on the laboring class. Once they were 
in full cry, Manson deserted the pack and returned 
to me. 

“Now that I have arrayed the classes against the 
masses, we may go on with what we were about to 
say,” he began. 

“But there is nothing we know or feel about which 
it is possible to talk—here,” I returned, having al¬ 
ready realized that this might make us the object 
of mischievous conjectures. 

“On the contrary, we have burning interests in 
common,” he retorted. “We have a quarrel to 
settle. Can anything be more intimate than that?” 

“It cannot be settled here,” I sent back evenly. 

“If they only knew that you regard me as an 
enemy, what a sensational party this would be,” he 
murmured under his breath. 

“We know it,” I replied, refusing to exchange a 
smile for the one he offered. 

“We might keep the armistice so happily begun 
here. I would be a passionate pacifist with your 
permission.” 

“On your own terms, Mr. Manson!” I retorted. 

229 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


“Yes, of course, but you might give me a chance 
to—present them.” 

He was regarding me like a lover, and he was 
talking to me like a Shylock. He would make his 
own terms. Some unconfessed emotion seized me. 
I found myself sitting stiffly erect, my cheeks burn¬ 
ing, tears tempting me. This would never do! If 
only some one would address a remark to me! If I 
might slip gracefully into the general conversation! 

“Will you 4 ?” came Manson’s voice. 

“I cannot imagine myself in a position where I 
could not make my own terms. Besides, is this the 
proper place to discuss business 4 ?” I answered. 

“Business!” he repeated, as if the very word was 
incredible. 

“Nancy! What mischief are you two plotting?” 
Katherine called out. 

“We were not plotting anything good or bad,” 
Black Manson answered quickly. “I was just tell¬ 
ing Miss McPherson about something that happened 
the other day.” 

“He wants to tell all of us. He is bidding for an 
audience!” Lock complained. 

“Did it happen to you, Mr. Manson?” the Red¬ 
mond girl asked. 

“In a way, yes,” he admitted. 

“Well, let’s have it!” Lock grumbled, “but from 
the looks of Nancy, I doubt if vou should be al- 

230 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

lowed to tell it. She was not pleased. She is not 
pleased now either. I know by the activity of her 
complexion. I move we leave it to Nancy. Are 
you willing that he should go on with what he was 
saying to you, or—” 

“Really, I have no idea what Mr. Manson was 
going to say,” I interrupted. 

“Oh, go on, Black,” Katherine put in. 

“And make it snappy. We are long on ideas and 
short on human interest to-night. Have you had a 
desperate encounter with the hick or is it about one 
of the fair sex out there? Or, are they fair?” 

“This one was. She was the fairest, loveliest 
thing I ever saw,” Manson replied. 

“Sounds promising. Go to it, old man! Had 
you known her long, or was it love at first sight?” 

“I leave you to be the judge of that,” he returned, 
laying down his salad fork and sweeping the com¬ 
pany with an enigmatical smile, which merely 
grazed me in passing. Yet it conveyed a challenge. 

“There is a forest on my place, skirted by the 
public highway,” he began. “We had an early frost 
this year, you know, and the leaves lie in long 
windrows beside this road. Pretty; looks like miles 
of glowing, rustling brocades rolled up. Well, one 
afternoon last week I was on my way home, walk¬ 
ing. The weather was fine, keen wind blowing, sun 
shining, not a soul in sight. Then I heard some- 

231 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

thing, like the sound of tearing silk. I came round 
a curve, and there, not twenty paces ahead, was— 
well, the living spirit of a May Day all togged out 
in autumn colors!” 

“The girl!” Katherine breathed ecstatically. . 

“It was,” he nodded to her, “obviously a girl. 
What I had heard was the noise she made wading 
through those drifts of leaves. She wore a brown 
sweater, the color of dead oak leaves, a yellow-and- 
brown plaid skirt, and her head was bare. Hair 
every shade of brightness from red to the finest gold. 
You could not tell it from the sunshine, except that 
it curled. She was having the time of her life wad¬ 
ing in those leaves.” 

“Did you recognize her?” from Katherine again. 

“I did not. I simply fell back.” 

“Fell back!” Whitsett exclaimed in disgust. 

“Didn’t want to intrude; saw she thought she 
was alone; wanted to see what she would do next. 
You rarely ever have an opportunity to observe 
another person when they think they are free from 
the restraint of every eye.” 

“Don’t moralize, go on!” Lock grunted. 

“She came presently to a heavy drift of leaves in 
a low place beside the road. She stepped into it, 
prettily, you understand, holding her arms out, bal¬ 
ancing herself, evidently making sure of the ground 
beneath, as one might sound the depths of a pool. 

232 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

She stood for a moment not knowing, I believe, 
what she would do next, as kin to those leaves as a 
fish is to the sea. Probably she caught the idea 
from the wind blowing them about her. Anyway 
she began to dance. Never have I seen such grace. 
First in a circle, slowly as if she chanted with her 
feet; then faster, until she was spinning like a 
golden-headed top. And as she danced the leaves 
rose and whirled about her. They flew higher and 
higher. Sometimes I could barely see the girl, then 
again she showed forth as if she also might be 
sailing off in the wind with them. Finally she 
caught sight of me. That ended the performance. 
She literally took to her heels.” 

“What did you do?” 

“Nothing! What could I do? I was abashed. 
I felt that I had witnessed a sacred, innocent orgy 
of the feminine soul.” 

“Are you sure she was a native?” Mrs. Walton 
wanted to know, using this term “native” as so 
many people do when they refer to country folk. 

“Oh, yes, she lives there.” 

“Where did she learn to dance like that?” 

“From the inside, I imagine; unstudied, perfect 
grace; no fashionable rag or pattern dance.” 

“It sounds very interesting. She might make a 
fortune if she could do it on the stage. Anything 
new; call it the Dance of the Girl and the Leaves. 

233 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


Why don’t you promote her, Black,” Katherine sug¬ 
gested. “With your influence in New York—” 

“Call it his past,” Lock interjected. 

“You might easily get an engagement for her to 
do that dance,” Katherine finished. 

“Such a blasphemy never entered my thoughts,” 
Manson answered with a bur in his voice as if he 
got it out of his vocal arsenal. 

Lock laid down his fork, leaned back and stared 
solemnly at Manson. 

“He’s stricken! He’s in love with her! Lord, 
how are the mighty fallen!” 

I was the one person at the table who had not by 
word or glance taken part in this scene. I dared not 
look at Manson. I wished never to see him again. 
In the midst of a flaming self-consciousness that 
he had not defended himself against Lock’s accusa¬ 
tions I caught Katherine’s eye fixed in a sort of 
compassionate irritation on my face and knew that 
I had lost my color. Then the baiting of Manson 
went on. 

“Don’t tell me that you didn’t set out to overtake 
that girl. I won’t believe it,” Whitsett cut in. 

“Oh, I did of course,” Manson admitted; and I 
felt suddenly that he was closing in on me—that 
he had been waiting for this cue. 

“I thought so,” Lock sneered. “And how did you 
manage that part of it*?” 

234 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


“I didn’t manage it. I simply passed her.” 

“In high gear or low 4 ?” 

“High—making, I should say, about ten miles an 
hour.” 

“Was that all that happened 4 ?” Katherine wanted 
to know in a voice denoting disappointment. 

For the first time during this ordeal I oaught Black 
Manson’s eye. It was provocative, triumphant. He 
held me in this suspense, implying that it depended 
entirely upon me whether he would omit the divert¬ 
ing climax of how this girl had in turn chased him 
and overtaken him. I understood that if I should 
show some sign of entreaty he would spare me. 
This was the smiling threat in his eye, beneath which 
I flamed scarlet. All of this in the briefest moment, 
and in the same moment the orchestra started up 
with a whirl of dancers. 

“May I have this dance 4 ?” he whispered under 
cover of the momentary distraction the music had 
made. 

I had been determined not to dance with him, but 
now this seemed the easiest way to escape. 


235 


CHAPTER XIX 


The remainder of that evening is like the con¬ 
fusion of a dream. What happened I attribute to 
the intoxication of the rhythm. I have always loved 
to dance above every other carnal pleasure. It is 
like singing with one’s feet. And Black Manson 
danced with that strong, easy, compelling grace 
which held me entranced. At times I was ineffably 
happy; at other moments, when we were at the 
end of the long hall, I experienced the full meas¬ 
ure of my antagonism and would be on the point 
of whirling from his arms and disappearing through 
a French window there which opened on a gallery. 
Then I was conscious that he knew what thought 
was in my mind by a certain closer strength with 
which he swung me in the midstream of the dancers, 
only to drift to the edge again when we were past 
the window. 

Now and then other members of our party passed 
us. But when I wished to join this group between 
the numbers Manson said it was stuffy there and 
found another place on a seat beside the wall, where 
we were conspicuous enough, but alone. 

My feeling was that it was a sort of perjury to 
dance with this man. I was on the point of excus- 

236 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

ing myself when the music began and I saw Hammie 
Lock making his way toward us. 

“Nancy, spare me this one before the rush be¬ 
gins. Half a dozen fellows begging to be presented 
now! Got my hands full choosing partners for 
you,” he said. 

But even as I stood up Black Manson took me 
with a gentle but firm swing into the waltz, saying 
over his shoulder to Hammie as we passed, “She 
has just given me this one.” 

I had only time to see the look of cool, specula¬ 
tive amusement on Lock’s face before we were lost 
in the moving rainbow of the dance. 

When a woman has always exercised romantic 
authority to the point of tyranny over men it is a 
new and not wholly unpleasant sensation to have 
her will snatched away from her. I could have been 
happy but for my deeper resentment against this 
man. But in spite of that my heart beat with a sort 
of angry exultation. We scarcely exchanged a 
word. It was as if some life of us apart from our 
real lives was united, calm and joyful beyond any 
mind we had to disturb it. 

As near as I can tell this was the process, not 
mental but emotional, by which I finally permitted 
myself to become the sensation of the evening—a 
stranger, a pretty woman, growing pinker, prettier, 
dancing with only one man when other men would 

237 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


gladly have made her less conspicuous with more 
diversified attention. I knew all that, felt it in the 
glance of a hundred eyes. I had the will to break 
away, but I was distinctly conscious of choosing 
this madness with the mind of a man who takes a 
header with the firm intention of being sober the 
next day and of pursuing his virtues and purposes 
accordingly. I became at last mischievously ani¬ 
mated with this idea. I had been tricked into this 
situation. I would play the game with every art 
and charm I had and leave Manson to draw his 
own conclusions afterwards, when this truce ended, 
as it would at midnight of this night. Having set¬ 
tled this matter I became a song against this man’s 
breast. I danced as I had never danced before, con¬ 
scious always of his studious, smiling eyes bent upon 
me from above. 

It was past eleven o’clock when finally as we 
came in a whirling, swifter dance close to the win¬ 
dow which opened on the gallery I felt that we were 
not going to pass it. In spite of my effort now to 
remain in the midstream of the dancers he drew 
away beyond the edge and with a swing that lifted 
me for an instant off my feet I found myself outside 
on the gallery, alone with Manson and the moon. 
This place was glassed in and warm, with palms 
and ferns banked behind the benches. 

I sat on one of these benches much as one carries 

238 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


out one of the rules of polite society, which insists 
that one must always escape from a scene without 
making one if possible. In another moment I 
would excuse myself and go upstairs, where I was 
to meet Katherine at twelve o’clock. 

Manson came and sat down beside me with his 
face turned and his eyes searching the moonlit dark¬ 
ness beyond. I had again the same sensation, ex¬ 
perienced that first night at Redfields when he came 
across the lawn and sat on the wall of the veranda, 
of being dangerously near a man of ancient mould. 
Life and power emanated from him. His silence 
was the silence of a huge and overbearing nature. 
I stared at him and thanked heaven that I did not 
love him, that an implacable antagonism saved me 
from falling upon his breast and crying out a dread¬ 
ful surrender. 

“How long does this truce last? Through to¬ 
morrow?” he asked abruptly. 

“I am to meet Katherine in the dressing room at 
twelve o’clock. What time is it now?” I asked in 
return. 

He took out his watch. “Twenty minutes to 
twelve,” he said, thrusting it back into his 
pocket. 

“Do you remember that night last summer at 
Redfields when I found you sitting out there in the 
bright darkness?” he began. 

239 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


“I have not forgotten, but you did not tell me 
who you were,” I reminded him. 

“Still we knew each other,” he returned. 

“I did not know that you were Black Manson.” 

“I am not Black Manson. My name is Enoch. 
Black is a sort of title I got in my college days. It 
is descriptive, an adjective defining my coloring— 
and probably my disposition in those days.” 

“Enoch!” I exclaimed in amazed recollection of 
having thought of this name as descriptive of him. 

“Yes, thank you,” he answered. 

“I was merely repeating the name,” I retorted 
primly. 

“That night I did not behave very well,” he 
went on. 

“No,” I agreed. 

“I was too much astonished to find you there—a 
white-and-gold lily wrapped in a green sheath with 
the moonlight on your face. If I had said anything 
it would have been worse than a breach of man¬ 
ners; you understand?” regarding me with his dark, 
trumpeting eyes. 

“No, I do not,” I answered. 

“You will not. Men find salvation in love, as 
women find sacrifice. There is no other salvation 
for us. Do you think I will live now without 
mine?” 

“For all of me you will.” 

240 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

“Not if I die for it, I will not. You love me. 
We know love together since that night.” 

“Never have I felt such antagonism to any living 
man. Never before has any man made hatred a 
pleasure to me,” I answered. 

I saw his eyes drop to my hands, which were 
trembling as if this was really my answer. 

“You are wrong about the land. I saved it—for 
you, not knowing. But for me, nothing would have 
remained of Redfields plantation when you came 
home.” 

“I will have it all again,” I retorted. 

“Willingly.” 

“No. Not until I have paid for what you have 
taken,” I exclaimed angrily, coming to my feet. 

“But it is not for sale,” he insisted smiling. 

“I will wait. I can at least outlive you,” I cried. 

“A futile threat, Nancy McPherson. In that 
event you would naturally be my heir,” he 
laughed. 

I moved past him through the open window 
down into the ballroom. 

“Then it is war?” he asked, joining me. 

“And no quarter asked nor given,” I returned, my 
eyes smarting with tears. If eyes could only swal¬ 
low tears, I reflected helplessly. 

Then I saw Katherine on the stairs. The sight 
of her, poised there scanning the room for me, eased 

241 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

the strain. Presently I would escape from the grasp¬ 
ing will of this man. I should be myself again, sane 
and able. I do not know if it was this thought or 
some feminine trickery but—I flashed a smile at 
Manson through these tears that ended in a laugh. 
He received it with soberness, as if he were con¬ 
cerned for me as for one determined upon a hopeless 
adventure from which he would save me. 

A woman may be chaste, but I doubt if the best 
one of us is moral in matters of love. That night 
I could not sleep for prideful happiness. Once more 
love had endowed me. I felt invincible. I had my 
own valor now for the struggle against Black Man- 
son. He had himself given me the mischievous, vin¬ 
dictive strength for it. I could think of a hundred 
ways, all madly improbable, for paying that mort¬ 
gage. I must have a talk with Hammie Lock and 
find out if there was anything in this financial flare 
of the sweet potato. My last thoughts were crea¬ 
tive, having all the glamour of a romance. Manson 
should love me, yes, I would see to that! In the 
meantime I would, I must, acquire wealth—more 
than enough to pay father’s debts, enough to make 
Manson humble. The thing I hated most in him 
was his assurance at my expense. I had no doubt 
he would tire of his farming project and be ready 
enough to sell when I should be able to buy. 

242 


CHAPTER XX 


The next morning when I came down to break¬ 
fast plans had been already made for the day. 
Katherine must meet Mrs. Walton’s committee at 
ten o’clock. She could not refuse, but it was tire¬ 
some. 

“So Hammie wants to take you out to the plant. 
And I will meet you at the club for lunch. Then 
we shall have the afternoon to talk it over,” she said, 
with an enigmatic twinkle in her eye. 

“She refers to your conquest of Manson, Nancy,” 
Lock explained. 

“Oh, my dear, you are a lucky girl. They have 
been trailing him for a year in this town. Mothers 
and daughters. And you just come and walk off 
with him in one evening!” she giggled. 

“Nerve, I call it. You have not a friend in this 
city, Nancy. Not after that performance last night. 
You rubbed it in. You dragged him. It was shock¬ 
ing, if you want to know what I think,” Lock added, 
wagging his head. 

“Well, it does not matter what either one of you 
think because you do not know anything about it,” 
I laughed. 

“Only what we saw.” 

243 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


“I am not interested in Mr. Manson. I have 
something much more important to discuss with you, 
Hammie. I want you to tell me about the sweet 
potato!” 

“Oh, heavens, don’t start him!” Katherine cried. 

But he was already off. We would drive out to 
the government plant at once. They had made an 
experiment out there this year on a small scale— 
only a hundred acres—but enough to prove the 
enormous profit. He particularly wanted me to 
meet Philrod. 

“Who is Philrod?” 

“The man that put it over. Ready now to ship 
potatoes to the uttermost parts of the earth. Cured. 
Warranted to keep. I’d take him with me, but he 
will not go to Arkansas. Won’t leave this state. 
Genius, but an old fool.” 

So the talk went back and forth until at last we 
were in the car and off to the great powder plant, 
which cost the Government ninety million dollars, 
and which had been purchased by a corporation for 
nine million. 

It is no part of this narrative to discuss the waste 
of war. I merely say in passing that this plant is a 
stupendous illustration of it. It is now an empty 
city capable of housing fifty thousand people, with 
splendid modern school buildings, churches, gym¬ 
nasiums and swimming pools. It is set in the midst 

244 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

of five thousand acres of fertile land. A river flows 
through it, spanned by magnificent bridges. Paved 
streets and macadamized highways web every part 
of it. There are enough buildings in it fully 
equipped to accommodate a hundred big industries; 
enough engines to furnish three of the largest cities 
in this country with water; enough electric power to 
light every town and city in the state; enough dry 
goods to furnish the largest department store in 
New York from basement to the top floors. For 
example, there was more than a hundred thousand 
dollars’ worth of household furniture and as much 
more of office furniture. There was sufficient cloth¬ 
ing to clothe every man, woman and child in a big 
city for a year. Nothing had been omitted that 
could be needed or even desired by the freakish 
fancy, from spangled girdles for women to celluloid 
mustard spoons. There was a dozen huge boxes of 
spoons; between a hundred and two hundred thou¬ 
sand of them, Hammie told me. I shall always be¬ 
lieve that this must have been the most remarkable 
example of foresight on the part of our Govern¬ 
ment in its stupendous preparations for war. To my 
mind these little white spoons indicate the very grace 
notes of a free and untrammeled imagination in the 
spending of money raised by war bonds. But there 
were other instances more pretentious. Three hun¬ 
dred valves of a rare and expensive pattern were 

245 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


needed. The experienced stenographer to whom 
this order was dictated added one cipher. The gov¬ 
ernment agent merely signed his name without read¬ 
ing the order. As it happened the entire output of 
these valves in this country is three thousand a year. 
But with the progressive energy of a vast cupidity 
the firm that received the order filled it. The Gov¬ 
ernment paid ten thousand dollars for them. Later 
the same firm repurchased them for ten cents each. 

Machinery worth millions of dollars lay rusting 
among the acres of weeds high as a man’s head. 

This is a partial sketch of this great plant in 
October of 1920 which had been assembled and 
built in ninety days. The people of this country 
will be taxed to pay for it for two hundred years 
to come. Poverty resulting from the insane flurry 
of such extravagance will send more men, women 
and children to their graves than all the actual 
casualties of our armies amounted to during the 
great war. But in spite of all the leagues to pro¬ 
mote peace, no doubt the inevitable next war will 
find us without laws on our statute books regulating 
expenditures for war according to correct business 
methods. 

I was thinking something like this in a confused 
way when Lock halted his car before a long, low 
mountain range of tiles, pipes and building ma¬ 
terial which lay beside the railroad tracks. 

246 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


“We are selling this stuff for what we can get, 
say from ten to twenty per cent of the original cost,” 
he said. 

I had reason to remember this afterwards. In 
that rotting dust pile of iron, fluted hollow tiles and 
huge wooden beams lay the prospects of my fortune. 

We came out of the terrible empty city across the 
river bridge into the open fertile land. 

It was here on a plot of one hundred acres that 
he had made his experiment with sweet potatoes. 

“We salvaged the machinery and material for the 
curing house. Cost practically nothing, except what 
we paid for labor. Philrod managed the whole 
thing,” he explained. 

We found Philrod out there on the edge of the 
field, moving like an old dusty spider among the 
junk heaps of a thousand pieces of machinery. 

“He is converting some old tobacco planters into 
tractor machines for planting sweet potato slips. 
And he will do it!” Lock laughed as we descended 
from the car. 

Philrod acknowledged our presence. He was too 
busy, too absorbed, to practice cordiality. In the 
brief interview which followed, his manner could 
not have been more authoritative if he had been 
Moses leading a benighted nation through the 
wilderness to a Canaan where the sweet potato was 
to prove a more substantial diet than milk and 

247 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

honey. Also vastly more profitable. He lacked 
only the hypothecated beard of Moses. He was an 
old man, clean shaven, snappish, with sun-wrinkled 
eyelids that gave him a fierce blue squint. 

I forbear to set down the family name of the par¬ 
ticular potato for which Philrod had this passion, 
lest I should be censored on the charge of putting in 
a “snake” advertisement, but by the Christian name 
it bore of “Nancy” I infer that this potato is of 
the feminine gender. Philrod constantly referred to 
her as “she.” And he endowed her with all the at¬ 
tributes claimed by Solomon for the virtuous woman 
in the last chapter of Proverbs. 

“She’s industrious, I tell you! And thrifty, my 
Lord! And modest; keeps her shape like a lady. 
If there is a drought, does she sit there on the 
ground withering 4 ? No, sir! She goes on with her 
duty, producing and sweetening her young yams. 
All you have to do is to give her a deep, soft bed for 
’em to live in. She’ll raise ’em every time, seasons 
or no seasons!” 

He was still praising “her” when we started for 
the curing plant. 

I saw forty thousand bushels of these Nancies in 
the bins of this low red cocoon of a house with pipes 
running from it in every direction like small, black 
beetle eyes. Every one of these potatoes was in- 
crusted with a coat of crystallized sugar beneath 

248 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


the toughened skin, and they were still heavy and 
firm, not dried. 

“How on earth did you do it*?” I cried, tasting 
the sweet yellow meat. 

“That’s the secret,” Lock laughed. 

“They can be shipped to the coldest parts of this 
country, any country, in the holds of ships across 
seas, without the slightest danger from frost or mois¬ 
ture. We make sirup and starch from the culls— 
those cut in harvesting, I mean, and the defective 
ones. That is about six per cent of the crop. We 
make it the most profitable six per cent. 

“Come in here and I’ll show you the financial 
proofs of our success,” he said, holding the door 
of his snug little office open for me to enter. 

I sat waiting while he looked through a stack of 
papers on his desk. My heart was beating with 
what must be the same sort of excitement a man 
experiences when quite by accident he discovers a 
profitable ore mine on his farm. My thoughts spun 
a web of gold above the old cottonfield behind the 
Redfields station. What was to prevent me from 
engaging in this potato business 4 ? Surely Hammie 
Lock would not begrudge me such a chance to re¬ 
coup my fortune if he knew the situation. 

He thrust some pages of typewritten stuff across 
the desk. 

“The names of three hundred brokers from all 

249 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


parts of this country who are now bidding for our 
potatoes, 55 he informed me with a grin. 

It was at this point, with my hand trembling 
above these pages on his desk, that I presented my 
own case: the necessity I was under to raise money, 
to make money and to get a great deal of it quickly. 
I did not omit the story of how father had been 
obliged to sacrifice nearly half of Redfields planta¬ 
tion. 

He had listened at first in amazement, then with 
the quiet, averted eyes of a man at a funeral. But 
when I mentioned the sum paid for this timberland, 
including the two hundred acres cleared, he glanced 
back at me. 

“Who bought it at that price? 55 he growled. 

I hesitated, flushing with the consciousness that it 
was to protect Black Manson when I answered: 

“Oh, it doesn’t matter now. He paid for it. 
And the worst is that he holds a mortgage for twenty 
thousand on the remainder of Redfields! 55 

“He must be some rascal! 55 

“For him it was simply a good stroke of busi¬ 
ness, 55 I was astonished to hear myself reply. 

I wondered what his comment would be if I 
should suddenly reveal the name of this rascal. 
Then I wondered why I did not reveal it. Instead 
I went on after a pause: 

250 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


“The mortgage falls due in another year and the 
interest has not been paid in two years. ,, 

“He could afford to wait with such security,” he 
grumbled. 

“But there are the best of reasons why I could 
not bear to ask for time—not from him,” I ex¬ 
plained. 

“Oh, I see,” he said, looking away again as if he 
desired to remove what he saw from my sight. 

“Hammie,” I began, “there is a hundred acres of 
better land than you have here at Redhelds for rais¬ 
ing potatoes.” 

He flirted round in his chair and regarded me with 
startled interest; not, I felt, altogether favorable 
interest, but as a man listens to the impractical 
plans of a woman. But I was not to be discouraged. 
Too much depended upon his approval. Presently I 
felt that he was really taking hold. He began to ask 
questions. Yes, the location was right, he admitted. 
My description of the soil was favorable. And the 
fact that there was a railroad station on this land 
was nothing short of providential. 

“Reduces the cost by half,” he exclaimed. “And 
the material you need for the curing plant is right 
here, to be had for a song. If you had five hundred 
acres I’d take it over myself, Nancy!” 

“But I want to do it, the whole thing, myself. 

251 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


You wouldn’t understand, but it is not merely the 
money I need—it is the reason I have for putting 
something over, a big thing, the kind of thing a man 
does,” I went on breathlessly. 

“But you are a woman. You can’t. Very few 
women found big businesses, though they manage 
one after it is going in rare instances. 

“And there is another trouble. This is a secret 
process we have. It is not the drying method al¬ 
ready in use. And we figure that at least five years 
must elapse before the producers at large discover 
our secret. Before that time our fortunes will be 
made and we can afford to be philanthropic, but not 
yet!” smiling grimly. 

“You mean that you cannot tell me how it is 
done?” 

“We are bound not to do so.” 

“Doesn’t Philrod know?” 

“Oh, yes. But he is safe. He has invested all 
his capital in it. Stock company, you know.” 

“But you told me a while ago that he will not go 
with you to Arkansas. He might be willing to 
come to Redfields,” I suggested. 

Lock whistled. He whistled three bars of a silly 
tune and then went over it again and again until 
my nerves were on edge. 

“He might do it. No telling what Philrod will 
or will not do,” he admitted finally. 

252 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

“If I might see him!” I began. 

He laughed. 

“I shouldn’t wonder if he didn’t fall for anything 
you wanted, Nancy; most men would. But what 
about Manson 4 ?” regarding me with a shrewd 
twinkle. 

My heart fell. My color rose. Did this mean 
that he knew of Manson’s relation to this situa¬ 
tion 4 ? Had he and Katherine only pretended igno¬ 
rance ^ 

“It is just as well to be frank in matters of busi¬ 
ness. Not that I would otherwise invite your con¬ 
fidence,” he explained, smiling more broadly. 

“I really cannot see what Mr. Manson has to do 
with this,” I returned with frigid dignity. 

“Nothing, of course, but it appears to all of us 
that he—well, you know it was pretty plain last 
night that he is tremendously interested in you.” 

“I do not admit that, but what if he is 4 ?” 

4 ‘Well, it ought to settle everything for you in 
the happiest possible way—that is—” regarding me 
with a genially interrogative stare. 

“Hammie, don’t mention that man to me. I—I 
dislike him intensely,” I almost sobbed. 

44 You have a strange way of showing it. My im¬ 
pression is that you encouraged him last night. 
Katherine insists that it is a case of love at first 
sight,” he laughed. 


253 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


“I cannot explain, but you are mistaken. I shall 
not marry any one, least of all Mr. -Manson. I 
have made my vows to the land. I am determined 
to keep Redfields. Now if you could only help me, 
I know this would be my chance to do something 
really worth while,” I said, and led him on to dis¬ 
cuss what the costs would be. 

He figured briefly, as a man does who has all the 
calculations by memory. 

“Fifteen thousand ought to see you through,” he 
said, regarding me thoughtfully. 

“Then I shall need twenty thousand, and I have 
not one,” I sighed. 

He looked at his watch. “Just time enough to 
meet Katherine for lunch,” rising. 

I had the depressed feeling that the need of 
twenty thousand dollars had closed this discussion. 
But when we were spinning along the road back 
to town Lock surprised me with this: 

“I am taking your word for it, Nancy, that you 
are not, cannot be interested in Manson. Am I 
right?” 

“Please, Hammie! I cannot even bear to think 
of him!” 

“Well, you might later, you know.” 

“I won’t!” 

“He is all to the good. I can tell you that. Made 
a mint of money in New York. Got a farm down 

254 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

here somewhere. Nobody knows where. Gets his 
mail through his bank in New York. But this farm¬ 
ing project is only a whim. He will go back to his 
business when conditions are more favorable. I 
think I ought to tell you he is all right. You could 
depend upon him. He is straight.” 

“But I don’t want to depend on him—I—do you 
know how it sounds for you to be recommending 
him—like this—when you only introduced him to 
me last night?” I exclaimed, choosing my words 
awkwardly, in order to tell the truth about this 
meeting without betraying the real truth. 

“No offense meant, Nancy. I only wanted to 
make sure before we went further into this potato 
business. There may be something in it for you,” 
he answered soothingly. 

His mind was still on that then! I was encour¬ 
aged and appeased. I said something polite about 
Manson, implying that he was no doubt a very per¬ 
sonable person, but potatoes were far more attrac¬ 
tive to me now. At which he laughed and said girls 
were funny things—“the most careless gamblers on 
earth with their own destinies!” 

We were crawling at a snail’s pace through the 
traffic of the downtown streets before he began 
abruptly: 

“I’ll tell you what we will do. After lunch I 
will drop you and Katherine somewhere. Then I 

255 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


will go into this thing thoroughly for you. Philrod 
is the main difficulty.” 

“I should think getting the loan would be the 
hardest thing. I could only give a second mortgage 
on Redfields. And people don’t seem to care for 
second mortgages.” 

He let out a snort of laughter. “As a rule, no, 
but I have a man in mind who might risk it. I am 
pretty sure he will. The whole thing depends on 
Philrod. That is as the wind takes him.” 

I spent a fierce afternoon with Katherine, shop¬ 
ping. When you have no money with which to 
buy, the frivolity and extravagance of a woman 
who has is irritating. Besides, she must hurry home 
because she was sure Black would call before he left 
the city. 

But when we came in no one had called. 

“That means that he is coming with Hammie for 
dinner!” she decided. 

“Run up and dress, Nancy. And do use a little 
rouge, dear. You look a bit fagged,” she en¬ 
treated. 

It was past seven o’clock when Lock finally came 
in, and alone. 

“Where is Black*?” Katherine demanded. 

“Haven’t an idea,” Lock answered cheerfully. 

“But he has not called nor sent flowers—nor any¬ 
thing! Have you seen him?” 

256 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


“Yes, I did,” his manner implied that this was 
only a casual, passing glimpse. 

“I have been at the plant all afternoon. Had it 
out with Philrod, Nancy,” turning to me with a fine 
sparkle. “Looks like a sure thing. I think he will 
take you up.” 

“Take Nancy up. What do you mean 4 ?” Kath¬ 
erine demanded, puzzled. 

“Another speculation in sweet potatoes, kitten. 
McPherson and Philrod, this time. Tell you all 
about everything after dinner, Nancy!” he called 
from the stairs. 

“But what has become of Black?” Katherine 
squealed after him. 

“Oh, he left on the afternoon train. I don't 
know what becomes of him when he goes,” he yelled 
back, as if Manson was the least of his thoughts. 

“Men are so stupid!” 

“You mean Hammie?” I asked, seeing her dis¬ 
consolate face. 

“Yes, he is a good husband but a perfect dolt 
about some things. Any woman would have known 
what to do, but Hammie doesn't seem to have 
thought of bringing Black Manson out here to see 
you,” she fussed. 

“I don’t want to see him.” 

“That’s your cue, of course, Nancy. But you 
know he is crazy about you, and I know you are in 

257 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


love with him. Why, you have not mentioned him 
once to-day. That is a sure sign. You need not 
blush!” 

“I blush to think how little you know about it,” 
I retorted. 

“And lovers are so helpless in this first stage! I 
am simply out of patience with Hammie,” un¬ 
moved in her convictions by what I had just said. 

j 

Before the end of the evening I was committed 
to the plan of building a curing plant at Redfields 
station and of trying my fortune with nothing be¬ 
tween me and misfortune but Phil rod’s experience 
and a loan of twenty thousand dollars which Lock 
had secured with a second mortgage on Redfields 
plantation. 

“I have had the papers made out. All you have 
to do is to sign your name here on this line,” he 
said, unfolding the paper. 

“But from whom am I borrowing this money?” I 
wanted to know. 

“From the Trust and Savings Bank of New 
York. They have an agency here. Better read it,” 
he suggested. 

Nothing, I believe, is more binding on the carnal 
rights and liberties of men than a mortgage, unless 
it is the vows they take when they join the church, 
which is indeed a mortgage nobody ever pays off. 

258 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

This one was of that sternly grasping nature. But 
I made haste to sign it. 

“Now present this check at your bank and you 
are financed for better or for worse!” he said, offer¬ 
ing me a cashier’s certified check for twenty thou¬ 
sand dollars. 

“Philrod is coming down to you one day next 
week. After that it is sink or swim for you, 
Nancy!” he laughed. 

The next afternoon I took the train for Redfields, 
twice my original depth in debts and mortgages, 
committed to a new and untried speculation, but 
feeling immeasurably financed with every kind of 
hope that makes a woman more wilfully and 
proudly a woman. 

The day was raw and drizzling rain. When we 
were within a few miles of Redfields station this 
rain changed to sleet, which stuck to the windows 
of the coach, making them like ground glass. I 
rubbed the inside fog off and tried to see through. 
The only object I made out was the blurred shape 
of a long-bodied automobile on the road below the 
railroad. The driver was evidently racing with the 
train, a perilous thing to do considering the condi¬ 
tion of the road. I put on my raincoat, buttoned it 
snugly to my chin just as the whistle blew for Red¬ 
fields. 

It was Sunday afternoon. The station would be 

259 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


deserted. Even Tinkham’s store would be closed. 
I was dreading the walk home in this weather as I 
followed the porter with my bag to the platform 
of the car. 

The wind caught me in a blinding whirl of sleet 
as I descended from the coach. For the briefest 
instant I thought this was the conductor handing 
me down. Then the feel of his warm, enormous 
hand passed through me like a shock, and I was 
standing on the ground staring into the smiling eyes 
of Black Manson. Behind him in the road stood 
the long racing car with the steam hissing from the 
top of the radiator. 

“I have been racing with you for the last four 
miles,” he laughed, hurrying me to this car, in 
which the porter had already flung my bag. 

“This thing is wide open,” he said springing 
in beside me, and folding his tall knees under the 
wheel, “but I had an idea you might like a good 
stiff whiff of this weather,” slipping noiselessly into 
high gear. 

“Yes,” I gasped, when the wind blew my breath 
away. 

“It is what I call a fine farming day,” he said. 

“I love it!” I answered. 

“You would! You believe in inclement weather. 
But you can afford to,” taking a bolder look at me. 

260 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


My face was wet, my hair crinkled and blown across 
my eyes. 

This was the end of speech between us. The dis¬ 
tance was so short. I was sure he was conscious 
of having won another stroke. I was recklessly 
happy, giving him one careening wind-whipped 
smile after another. But I was supremely conscious 
of that animosity which is the very claws of love. 
I could have shouted, swinging close to him over 
this perilous road, knowing at last that I had the 
means to defeat him. 

Once more at the door of Redhelds house he 
caught me beneath his trumpeting black eyes, as if 
he read my mind and thought lightly of my treach¬ 
ery. 

“Good-by and good luck!” he said, with the same 
amused twinkle. 


261 



PART SEVEN 


CHAPTER XXI 

It is a good thing to change your mind, your con¬ 
victions, even your prejudices, occasionally. For by 
this simple process you change your scenes, that in¬ 
ward topography of life which is so much more 
diversified than the East or the West of the mere 
earth. The fact that so many people fail to do 
this accounts for the listless submission of the poor, 
who move from time to time, like leaves blown in 
the wind by no hope or volition of their own. And 
it also explains the nomadic existence of the rich, 
who travel for change and diversion. Their rest¬ 
lessness is the result of mental cowardice and moral 
laziness. They go to Florida because the scenes are 
laid there by Nature and capital for their indul¬ 
gence and amusement. They go abroad for the 
same reason, because it is easier to suck culture, 
ready-made, from museums than to be really well- 
bred, easier to visit the tombs of history than to 
produce history. They ride hobbies because they 
lack the energy and perseverance for any honorable 

263 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


achievement. They attend operas and theaters to be 
spoon-fed emotionally because they have no powers 
within themselves to feel without artificial stimula¬ 
tion. They become involved in dangerous and de¬ 
cadent activities against society, not because they 
are honestly deluded radicals: it is their way of 
furnishing the funds to stage the ghastly drama of 
which horror is the motif. They want to see Rome 
burn because destruction is their instinct. Nero was 
a neurasthenic. They have been emasculated 
morally and spiritually by money. And for lack of 
honest idealism they inspire the mischief for which 
their victims pay with their lives and their liberties. 

The queer thing is that they do not succeed. It 
is because they have a sort of vermin imagination 
which destroys but never produces a creed or any 
culture nor a system of government which does not 
prove to be abhorrent to the very nature of men. 
Meanwhile some far off Energy is always at work 
on the next “act” for all of us. The Greeks called 
it Fate and read their oracles according to the wings 
and tail feathers of flying birds. The Jews called 
it Jehovah and had prophets to prove it. In every 
age, in every race from the lowest to the highest 
those men with the instinct to roost high believe 
somehow in the Almighty. 

What is true by the large is also true of us indi¬ 
vidually. Once in so often we get a new part to 

264 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


play. And we do not realize that for a long time 
we have been coached for this role. Your ansemic 
rich fellow rejects it and buys a new sensation. 
Your poor man flunks it. But by the hardest we 
who are neither very rich nor very poor get together 
a stock company to play the thing and change the 
spotlight of civilization. 

When I returned to Redflelds in June of this year 
1920, I had been depleted by ten years of silly 
worldly success—a sort of intellectual trick perform¬ 
ance with my imagination. I had only a choir sense 
of religion, which is no sense at all of God. The 
life of all cities tends toward atheism and material¬ 
ism, financed by the astounding enterprise of elo¬ 
quent, elegant, highly paid preachers in disgrace¬ 
fully expensive churches. But drop the bravest un¬ 
believer into a wilderness, leave him exposed to the 
harsh ministry of the elements, and before Decem¬ 
ber of the following year you will find him on his 
knees somewhere praying for the primitive comforts 
of warmth and food, which cannot be bought of 
God but are to be had only by the favor of His 
weather and seasons if you work for them. 

I had some severe lessons in Providence during 
the drought. For a time I had been cowed by the 
hopeless monotony and poverty about me. I was 
terrified by debts. I was a woman who had been 
financed splendidly in matters of love. And I was 

265 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


now living in a place where I was under the decent 
necessity of hating the only available lover within 
a thousand miles. I was in a deplorable situation, 
you understand. 

It was, I shall always believe, the sense of the 
Land which restored me, lifted me and changed 
my scenes. The first impractical spiritual exalta¬ 
tion at recovering this feeling of kinship with the 
eldest ancestor of us all had stiffened into a work¬ 
ing formula of material salvation. And I set it down 
here with apologies to all those crueller, more exact¬ 
ing saints who live and think by rote of their Lord, 
and who censor the rest of us so impiously. I had 
by this time a very strong gambling sense of Provi¬ 
dence based on the weather. One must have if his 
fortunes rest upon the yield of harvests from the 
land. Whatever may be said of election or pre¬ 
destination so far as the salvation of men is con¬ 
cerned there is no doubt in my mind that the 
weather was foreordained from the beginning, and it 
blows that way, and rains or does not rain regard¬ 
less of what you plant in your bottoms or on your 
uplands. 

Father had become the pale, gentle phantom of a 
former man, always patiently waiting to be noticed. 
He was soon to be the one tenderness in my harsh 
days. I had now the money to meet obligations 
and to finance the immediate future. Black Manson 

266 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


was bound to lose his creditor’s hold on Redfields 
plantation. If he lost his heart as well that also 
would be a legitimate profit for me in this transac¬ 
tion. His conduct had relieved me of any scruples, 
if indeed I was capable of entertaining scruples of 
this kind. The truth is, I had never been in love 
with any man. I had simply been loved, a satis¬ 
fying but not expensive experience for an attractive 
woman. What I mean is that I had never suffered 
that curious and anguishing defeat a woman knows 
in love, however secretly she knows it. 

There existed in me now the confusion of two 
great emotions: a new and consuming passion for 
this land which was my birthright, and shrewd cat¬ 
spitting antagonism toward Black Manson, who was 
still bent upon getting possession of it. It meant a 
complete change of scenes in my life. I had made 
this change. It was an act of courage. I felt brave 
but not fearless. But not to fear is to be a fool, 
to miss the sting of the spur that forces you to take 
the top rail in good form. 

Philrod came down the week after my visit to the 
Locks. We went over the ground. He was more 
than satisfied with the location of the land and the 
quality of the soil. 

“Six hundred bushels of potatoes may be the yield 
from an acre,” he told me. “I do not say we can 
hope for so much the first year, but we must at least 

267 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


try to split the difference between that and the ordi¬ 
nary yield of four hundred under the best methods 
of cultivation.” 

We spent the afternoon going over the plans. 
There must be a curing plant built of hollow tiles, 
ninety by ninety feet. It must be divided into bins, 
six by six by nine feet, each bin to contain two hun¬ 
dred and fifty bushels of potatoes. There would be 
one hundred and sixty bins in this house. The cost, 
including tiles, drying pipes and other materials, 
freight and labor would be not more than twelve 
hundred dollars, Philrod assured me. One carload 
of selected seed potatoes he could furnish himself 
for two hundred and fifty dollars, which was twenty 
dollars less than the market price. He would rent 
six tobacco planters for the season. They could be 
made to do until he invented a machine. These 
would cost sixty dollars. 

Fertilizer, including several hundred pounds of 
potash extra, would came to one hundred dollars. 
We must have potash to raise potatoes. Fortunately 
there was a surplus stock of it at Savannah, which 
we later obtained at a very low price. 

I had my own tractor for turning and harrowing 
the land, and enough teams to draw the planters. 

The original investment then covered the follow¬ 
ing items, which I copy from Philrod’s estimates. 
And we did not exceed them. 

268 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


Curing plant. $1,200 

Planters rented. 60 

Potash and fertilizer. 100 

Seed potatoes . 250 


Total. $1,610 


“If I don’t miss my guess our gross income from 
this first crop will be something like forty thousand 
dollars,” he said. 

“The success of the whole thing really depends 
upon you,” he warned me when he was about to 
take his departure. 

“Upon me?’ thankful that this could be so. 

“Yes, upon how well and how deep you turn the 
land this winter. It must be turned not less than 
fourteen inches. The January freezes will sponge 
it. If you get this done, neither flood nor drought 
will affect the yield of potatoes to any appreciable 
extent.” 

“If I ride the tractor myself it shall be done,” 
I assured him. 

This was the first intimation I had that human 
forethought may circumvent the weather work of 
Providence. 

Still if the weather had not cleared with a high 
wind blowing for days during the early part of 

269 








A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


November, I cannot say how this story might have 
ended, for if the rains had continued the land could 
not have been turned. 

I employed old Archie Winch to do this work. 
For ten days he sat upon that little squalling tractor, 
dragging two disks, a crazy-looking little wheel¬ 
barrow wheel and two subsoilers behind him through 
the held. The tractor was tanked up. So was 
Archie. But this was no time to concentrate on 
the morals of prohibition or on economy in gasoline. 
Winch told his cronies around Redhelds station 
that no man in his sober senses would ruin a hun¬ 
dred acres of land by turning up the hard-pan. He 
said he was obliged to keep “lit” in order to silence 
his conscience. 

This was the general opinion—that I was going to 
unnecessary expense to make this land unproduc¬ 
tive. Crowds of men gathered in the windy No¬ 
vember sunshine to watch the plowing. It was 
reasonable and right to turn land in the fall, but it 
was madness to rip the very gizzard out of it! Six 
inches was as deep as a plow should go! They spat 
tobacco juice and rumbled among themselves in the 
masculine undertones of disaster. Now and then 
some bolder or kinder one of them approached me, 
standing on the edge of the field like a small pillow 
of blowzy wind-blown cloud, urging Winch not to 
falter or lift his plow. What was the idea, this 

270 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

man wanted to know, of breaking the very bottom 
out of this land. I explained briefly, having very 
little knowledge at the time with which to defend 
my methods of agriculture. It was to let moisture 
up in case of drought and the water down in case 
of a wet season. Cotton, I was informed, did better 
in dry weather, and if it was a wet year nothing 
would save it. I had not confided to any one, not 
even to Winch, that the field would be planted in 
sweet potatoes. With everything else on my hands 
I did not feel equal to defending this adventure. I 
would leave them to discover the length and breadth 
of my madness as it developed. 

My nerve broke at last, however, when day after 
day I saw the sickly, sticky, hard soil turned up and 
the rich sandy loam turned under. One day I hur¬ 
ried frantically to the ’phone and called Philrod. 
I asked him if there was any danger in hard-pan. 
He answered sharply that it was the worst thing 
possible. 

“Well,” I informed him tearfully, “we have 
turned up nearly fifty acres of it.” 

“Go ahead, turn it all up! Then we won’t have 
any. Leave it to freeze a couple of times, then take 
your chances for harrowing it back in. That’s origi¬ 
nal soil, good stuff. We need it.” 

“Oh, I am so thankful, Mr. Philrod,” I quavered. 
“Why?” 


271 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


“Well, they are saying out here that I am ruin¬ 
ing this land plowing it so deep.” 

“Let them do the talking, you do the plowing. 
We’ll have the last word next October,” he cackled. 

So the hundred acres were turned. Then there 
came a hard freeze followed by an east wind and 
three inches of snow, which lay upon the ground 
for nearly a week. Followed another ten days of 
bitter cold. And I was anxious lest we should not 
get the land harrowed. But late in December 
Winch was in again with a spangle of disks behind 
his tractor. We were now so near the holiday 
season, always one of total inebriation for Winch, 
that I dared not remain for one day at Redfields 
house. My presence kept him on the tractor and 
reasonably sober. 

I have known in a mild way what it is to be a 
lightly distinguished person, to have my picture in 
the section of a magazine devoted to book reviews. 
And I have seen these books piled in shop windows 
for sale. There is a satisfaction in such experiences. 
But if you are honest you know that there are ten 
thousand better books out, a score of authors who 
surpass you so far that you can never be thought of 
in the same day with them. Now, however, for the 
first time in my life I tasted the joys of a superlative 
egotism. I was doing something real that counted. 
I had become a producer. Who was Belasco corn- 

272 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

pared with me? Belasco was a magician with arti¬ 
ficial lights and stage scenery who produced an 
amusement by portraying a folly or a tragedy which 
was no more than the mimicry of the humor and 
tragedy of life. Who was H. G. Wells anyhow? 
Another magician who wrote what might be true or 
what might be false with an equal facility of con¬ 
viction. A doughty little English cockney whose 
brain bloomed or stank according to the mood he 
was in. I was now great in my own right, with no 
need of a press agent or even a publisher. I was 
dealing with the great order of things. This was no 
little typewritten page of fanciful lies. This was 
the wide mellow breast of the earth out of which 
should come real substance in return for labor; food, 
the thing all men must have whether they read or 
do not read. 

No wonder the man who labors, who plows and 
plants and reaps, is a man of insufferable pride. 
He has the original Adam patent on human pride. I 
felt all the plus of being one of Nature’s noblemen. 
Old Winch gave it to me. Still, I had bought the 
tractor and I was paying Winch. You can’t do 
everything, especially if you are a woman. I had, 
however, the ambition to be as worthy as possible of 
my exalted pride. One afternoon I obliged Winch 
to descend and I mounted the tractor, shifted the 
gears and started round this immense field. Winch 

273 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


followed close beside me, bellowing such instructions 
as these: “Keep her throttled down! Step on it! 
Give her gas! Land’s stiff here!” 

Getting yourself treated with electricity by a pale 
specialist is nothing to what a tractor can do for 
you in the way of shock. This thing jarred me until 
my whole body was numb. But I remained on the 
little swaying seat and the disks remained in the 
ground. The tails of my coat flew back, flapping in 
the wind. I felt this wind tugging at the green 
felt hat on my head, but I was riding an angry 
monster that hissed and bellowed. If I relaxed my 
frantic grip on the steering wheel for a moment I 
might lose control. My face burned, my eyes were 
set in a wide stare ahead. I do not remember when 
the hat flew off, but I had a glimpse of Winch bear¬ 
ing it gingerly aloft as if this was my lady’s falcon 
he carried on his wrist. 

I should not have seen Black Manson if he had 
not appeared at the edge of the held directly in line 
with my vision. He was standing tilted back 
against the wand, his hands in his overcoat pockets, 
the brim of his hat blown flat against the crown. 
And he was laughing. I could hear the whoop of his 
merriment. At the same moment the engine let out 
a raucous grunt and ceased to be. The terrific noise 
and vibrations beneath me also ceased. It was a re¬ 
lief! 


274 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


“You chocked her, Miss Nancy, you chocked her 
dead!” Winch shouted, hurrying to the crank. He 
spun it, still clutching my hat in his other hand. 
But when the motor was going again I had already 
abdicated. 

“You may go ahead, Mr. Winch. I merely 
wished to make sure that I could handle a tractor,” 
I said with dignity, reaching for my hat. 

“Oh, yes’m, you could handle her,” he returned, 
eyeing me coolly as he climbed into the seat. “A 
lady can do anything for ten minutes, but how long 
could she hold out? That’s what I arsk the whole 
of your sex, marm!” 

He was not able to resist a toot of his horn as he 
passed on turning the clods to powder beneath the 
harrow. 

My belief is that Winch’s question is an import¬ 
ant one. We read constantly of Eastern pussy- 
kitten girls who have gone West, taken up land and 
farmed it successfully, driving their own tractors, 
reapers and binders. I wonder how many of them 
really do, or if they have their pictures taken seated 
on one of these machines, as I sat for half an hour on 
my tractor. Of one thing I am convinced: if South¬ 
ern women ever use more than their mere executive 
talents at this business and actually drive their own 
tractors they must be made with shock absorbers and 
silencers. 


275 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


My limbs trembled, my very knees quavered as 
I started walking across this held. Manson was al¬ 
ready coming to meet me, his merriment subsiding to 
a genial grin as he drew near enough to make out 
the fierce seriousness of my own face. 

“Where did you learn to drive a tractor?” he 
asked, taking my arm and swinging me along lightly 
over the soft earth. 

“I have always known how to drive a flivver,” I 
replied primly. 

“Well, you certainly were harrowing like a vet¬ 
eran farmer.” 

“I prefer the sewing machine,” I admitted, re¬ 
laxing beneath this flattery and beginning to laugh. 

We came out into the road behind the station, 
where his racing car stood. Before the speculative 
eyes of the men in the doorway of Tinkham’s store 
we climbed into this car and were off. 

“A smooth road feels very kind after bumping 
over a plowed field,” I said amiably. 

“You are preparing a wonderful seed bed there. 
Turning under the boll weevil too. Ought to grow 
fine cotton next year.” 

If this was a sneaking question put in simple dec¬ 
larative form I was not to be led by it into a be¬ 
trayal of my secret plans. So I merely answered, 
“Yes,” and was conscious of a swift glance shot 
at me from the tail of his eye. 

276 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


Why is it if yon are tired and suddenly find your¬ 
self in the presence of a man your weariness fre¬ 
quently changes into animation? If you are ac¬ 
tually ill you immediately feel remarkably well. I 
do not know, but it is a fact. My spirits rose now 
as we picked up speed. But it was not the speed; 
it was the man beside me that afforded this refresh¬ 
ment. I could have sung a song, I could have waved 
a salutation to every tree we passed with its boughs 
bending in the wind. But I remained silent. We 
both were. It was moved and agreed between us 
by an exchange of glances that speech might lead 
to an altercation concerning sordid business matters. 
I remember dismissing the appearance I made in 
this rough coat and rumpled hat and dusty shoes 
with the reflection that if he had seen me driving 
a tractor he had also danced with me. Women most 
constantly finance themselves with the counting of 
the beads of their charms. 

“Are we going anywhere?” I asked after a while, 
seeing that we were by this time beyond Redfields. 

“No place, merely together,” he answered, smil¬ 
ing ahead. 

“We will run into Cameron. I am expecting a 
wire; was on my way to get it when I saw you on 
the tractor. Knew you could not hold out for a 
second round. Waited on the chance of picking you 
up,” he added after a pause. 

277 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

There is this difference between men and women: 
When a woman is bent on conquest she becomes ani¬ 
mated, vivacious, she brightens and fades like a 
mirage. She is distant when she appears near, and 
suddenly very close when you thought her far re¬ 
moved. When you are dying of thirst in this desert 
she suddenly gives you her eyes as if these eyes were 
blue springs of living water. Or she will say some 
little thing that revives and nourishes you like milk 
and honeydew from the paradise of lovers. One 
thing you may depend upon: she is always revolv¬ 
ing and evolving some new vision of herself. She 
is the very kaleidoscope, not merely of herself but 
of every charm that belongs to any of the natures of 
women. She can do and be a thousand forms of 
loveliness for no reason at all except that of making 
an idle conquest. But a man gifted with the cor¬ 
responding powers of attraction can be mercilessly 
silent—and simply wait, wait for your nerve to 
break, for some predicted moment when you will 
betray yourself with a word or a gesture. 

The night following this ride with Black Manson, 
during which the silence between us had become at 
last so personal and significant as to be anguishing 
to me, I retired early, not to sleep but to suffer. I 
flung myself face downward on the bed and wept 
tears of rage. Wrestling with a mere angel for a 
blessing is nothing to the struggle a woman passes 

278 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


through wrestling with her own heart for freedom 
from the dominion of love. 

At last I was calmer, having arrived once more at 
the determination never to be taken by Black Man- 
son. I would achieve my own fate. I had the 
precious opportunity to prove my abilities and to 
keep the same for my own service. Love depleted 
a woman, deprived her of that inward sense of lib¬ 
erty so essential to her profounder self-respect. She 
exchanged this for tenderness, shelter and obedience 
when she surrendered to love. 

I considered tactics in the management of this 
affair. The next time I met Black Manson I would 
talk; I would not cease to talk even if I babbled. I 
would never again endure the implication of the 
silences that had fallen between us upon these 
former occasions. 


279 


CHAPTER XXII 


The night before Christmas Eve a great storm of 
sleet and snow blew down upon us. Snow fell until 
noon of the next day. Then the clouds cleared, 
the wind passed away and the earth lay like a bride 
in whiteness, every shrub and tree above her 
sparkling like jeweled patterns in a veil of lace cov¬ 
ering all her hills and valleys. 

It was three o’clock in the afternoon. I had been 
seated before the old secretary in the library getting 
off Christmas notes and packages. Now Ike came in 
with an armful of holly boughs. I moved about 
the room, thrusting a berry-laden branch here and 
there above a picture or in some old bracket on the 
wall. Then I sat down to the making of wreaths 
for the doors. This was chiefly to entertain father 
and to revive in his mind some faint vision of other 
years when this house was a merry place at this 
season. He sat now bundled up in his warm red 
dressing gown on the other side of the fire, watching 
me and fumbling with these memories. 

“Nancy, what was it we had on Christmas Day?” 
he wanted to know. 

“Turkey.” 

“No, something else.” 

280 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


“Plum pudding.” 

“It was not that,” he insisted irritably. 

“Eggnog,” I admitted. 

Yes, of course, but this was something he and 
Angus Armstead made for themselves here in the 
library. 

“Probably,” I concluded dryly, and went on bind¬ 
ing and bending these wreaths, knowing that if I 
remained silent long enough he would drift away 
into his innocent sleep of forgetfulness. Then it 
occurred to me that I might send for Angus Arm¬ 
stead to-morrow to keep father company on Christ¬ 
mas Day. I would make a celebration for these two 
old children slipping so dizzily down to the end of 
their years. 

Then there was the stamping of feet on the 
veranda, followed by the creaking of the front door. 
I listened, holding some sprigs of holly in my hands 
and stared at the library door, which began to open 
slowly and secretly. 

Mrs. Tinkham stuck her head in. She glanced at 
father, who leaned back asleep, looking like an old 
bearded saint. Then she put her hand in and 
worked her forefinger at me like a hook. 

I rose and tiptoed softly into the hall. 

“What is it*?” I asked, knowing that something 
must have happened to bring her out in such 
weather. 


281 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


She wore a pink woolen fascinator over her blond 
wig; her face was scarlet from the cold and she was 
quite breathless. 

“It’s Angus Armstead. He’s gone,” she gasped. 

“Gone?” 

“Dead.” 

“Ah!” 

“Couldn’t get you word sooner. ’Phone out of 
order and me obliged to take care of things at the 
store on account of Tinkham having to be over 
there,” incoherently. 

“When did it happen?” 

“Died last night. Harper passed there early this 
morning and he heard Bonnie squalling in the house. 
But he dassent go in,” glancing sidewise at me. 
“Can’t tell always why a woman like that makes 
a fuss. So he came on to the store and told Tink¬ 
ham and they went back over there, Winch and 
Harper with him. 

“They found Angus slumped down in his chair, 
gone, cold as ice, and Bonnie running round bare¬ 
footed in her nightdress, screaming and tearing her 
hair.” 

“How awful!” 

“Yes, it is, and Bruce away on a spree. Nobody 
knows where he is.” 

“Something must be done!” 

“Oh, everything’s been done that can be. The 

282 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


men have laid Angus out. They were putting him in 
the coffin a while ago as I came over here. And the 
doctor has been there to see Bonnie. She’s resting 
quiet now, but—” hesitating and looking at me. 

“Yes?” 

“There ain’t been a woman in that house to-day, 
nor for years that I know of. I didn’t go in myself. 
But I was thinking some of us ought to go.” 

“Of course,” I agreed, hurrying to put on my 
wraps and to send Ike in to stay with father. 

We were already outside on the veranda when 
Mrs. Tinkham remarked, “There ain’t no flowers 
this time of the year. Seems hard to drop an old 
man in the grave without a bouquet or something on 
him.” 

I ran back, caught up the Christmas wreaths and 
came out with them. 

We trudged off through the snow, Mrs. Tinkham 
voicing from time to time whatever reflections she 
had. She said Angus Armstead was a “good man in 
a way,” which was the best she could do for him. 
Then she said she supposed things would break up on 
the Armstead place now. Bruce had run through 
everything and Bonnie was no good. 

“They won’t stay here. So long as an old tree 
stands the pisen vines will cling to it and live, but 
when it falls they are bound to go down with it,” 
she concluded. After a pause she added, “But some- 

283 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


thing is going to happen before Bruce leaves, or I 
miss my guess.” 

'‘What will happen?” I asked. 

“Well, it’s no use to talk,” she evaded. 

We found a ghastly scene in that disheveled old 
house. Despair had kept it and death had visited it. 

Angus had already been screwed down in his 
coffin, which rested upon two chairs in the middle 
of the front room. The old armchair in which he 
had sat for so many years stood reared back before 
the cold fireplace. Mrs. Tinkham brushed up the 
hearth and lighted the lamp. I covered the lid of 
the casket with my wreaths. Half a dozen men 
stood out on the porch, talking in rumbling under¬ 
tones. 

“I reckon we ought to go in there,” Mrs. Tink¬ 
ham said, jerking her head toward the closed door 
of the next room. 

We went in. The room was lighted only with the 
reflected pallor of the snow from the outside. 

Bonnie lay straight and still on her bed, her hair 
spread on the pillow, her dark eyes wide open. She 
fixed them upon me gravely. Mrs. Tinkham went 
out to get a lamp. But no light could change the 
pallor in this room. The girl’s face held it. Mrs. 
Tinkham went out again. I heard her moving about 
in the kitchen. I said something to Bonnie. She 
made no reply; merely covered me with that long 

284 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


gaze. I wanted to touch her, take her hand in mine, 
but dared not. 

Mrs. Tinkham came in with food, a steaming cup. 
But Bonnie turned her head away. Presently when 
we were again alone she said softly, still with her 
face to the wall. 

“You can go now. You have done your duty. I 
want you both to go.” 

I went out and found Mrs. Tinkham waiting 
for me. 

“We might as well go. We have done our Chris¬ 
tian duty by her,” she said. 

“Some of her folks are coming on the evening 
train. And Tinkham just told me they have found 
Bruce in Cameron.” 

So we came away. I did not attend the funeral 
the next day. But the Tinkhams came over in 
the afternoon. Father recognized Mr. Tinkham. 
He wanted to know if he had “seen Angus lately.” 
Mr. Tinkham said he had. 

“Tell him to come over,” father commanded with 
a touch of his old authoritative air. 

Mrs. Tinkham whispered to me that Bonnie was 
going back with her folks to Atlanta. 

“But you watch my words. Bruce will lay round 
here until something happens,” she added. 

She had so often made this dark insinuation about 
Bruce Armstead that I was not impressed. 

285 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


She went on with the current news. She had 
heard that Black Manson was away for the holidays. 
Did I know that? I did not know anything about 
Mr. Manson, I assured her. She looked at me as if 
she thought I did, and went on with her gossip. 
She had heard that Harper’s wife was getting her 
mind back and would be home by spring. And that 
old Tom Carpenter was down with pneumonia, and 
that Mrs. Broadwick was “going to town some time 
in January to do her winter trading.” 

I wondered as I listened to this artless tattling 
how I was going to bear it for years and years. 
This was Christmas Day, and far away in the gath¬ 
ering gloom of the evening I could see the teeming 
streets of New York, sparkling in a myriad of lights. 
The holiday crowds on the Avenue, hurrying to their 
parties and rendezvous. I knew where old friends 
would meet to-night. I had scarcely thought of 
Oliver Wincheil. Now I longed for him, the 
smoothness of his wit, the elegance of his presence. 
This was a cold, sad and rigid Christmas Day 
through which I had passed. A few gifts, a few 
notes, but not a word from my enemy. He might 
have, well, done something. After all we were 
neighbors. I was suddenly tempted to send Oliver 
a telegram. And fell back from this temptation as 
one avoids a blow or a responsibility. Still I wanted 
him. The trouble is that I knew I needed him for 

286 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


only an hour or two; for a change, not forever. It 
was better, I concluded sensibly and dismally, to 
raise potatoes that could be sold and converted into 
some other value than to take a lover who could not 
be changed into anything but a husband, and there 
evolution ceased. 


.X 


287 


CHAPTER XXIII 


On the first day of January, 1921, I made a check 
to Black Manson for three thousand two hundred 
dollars and wrote at the bottom, “Payment in full 
of interest on Piedfields mortgage to date.” I mailed 
this thing with no additional comment. The fol¬ 
lowing day I received an equally brief acknowledg¬ 
ment from him in the form of a receipt. The omis¬ 
sion of polite financial language had its effects on 
both of us. I did not see him for two months. 
At first I congratulated myself upon having con¬ 
veyed to him at last a correct impression of our 
strictly business relationship. Then I became 
suspicious. One of the ways men have of re¬ 
ducing the pride of a woman is to affect in¬ 
difference. Finally I suffered the humiliation of 
being obliged to conclude that he really was indif¬ 
ferent. His attentions had been a form of masculine 
diablerie, an idle and mischievous effort at conquest 
which had failed. I was proud of having escaped 
any wound to my vanity, and at times wholly 
wretched after the manner of women, because life 
had become a strictly business enterprise, with no 
romantic glamour to relieve the harshness of it. 

288 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


Early in February Phil rod came on to take charge 
of the potato industry. Followed immediately one 
car after another laden with building material, 
which was unloaded at Redfields station. Strange- 
looking stuff, composed for the most part of hollow 
tiles, brick red and a trifle longer than the average 
brick. It was consigned to Philrod, and the specu¬ 
lations as to what he would do with it were rife. 
Then the box car of a work train was switched off 
at Redfields one day, which emitted half a score of 
masons, carpenters and laborers. No time was lost. 
Before they could sample the contents of Tinkham’s 
store, Philrod had them across the railroad to the 
edge of the plowed ground and started to laying out 
the foundations for the curing house. The people of 
this community are splendidly endowed with curi¬ 
osity, and they have never been satiated by the reel¬ 
ing world of affairs, nor by culture, nor any other 
form of mental food. Therefore they wanted to 
know what this building was for and why. They 
wanted to know all about this mysterious business. 
Finally I admitted to Mrs. Tinkham that it was for 
potatoes. 

“Potatoes! What kind?” 

“Sweet,” I told her. 

She lamented with her hands, lifting them and 
letting them fall like large withered leaves. 

“Nancy,” she exclaimed, “you are just like your 

289 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

father. He was always spending a fortune on one 
adventure after another.” 

It occurred to me with a sort of sinking feeling 
that I might indeed be following in father’s dis¬ 
astrous footsteps. 

“Don’t you know you can’t keep a house full of 
sweet potatoes? And you can’t sell them, only a 
few bushels now and then?” she moaned. 

“I wish you had let some of us know what you 
were up to. Why didn’t you advise with Mrs. 
Broad wick? She is sensible and experienced in 
farming.” 

“I did.” 

“What did she say?” 

“She was against my doing anything,” I laughed. 

“Tinkham could have told you potatoes are a drug 
on the market. They are poor folks’ food, so you 
get poor folks’ prices for ’em.” 

“Well, there are more poor people than rich ones. 
I produce for the biggest market in the world,” I 
retorted. 

“Wait and see what you produce,” she warned. 

This was the beginning of the battle we waged 
the whole of that year against the prejudices of our 
neighbors. Farming is like religion during the early 
Christian centuries. It leads to persecution. If you 
change your crops and your methods of cultivation 
the ancient orthodox priests of the land take up arms 

290 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

against you. They preach and prophesy your finan¬ 
cial damnation. And nothing will convert them but 
the evidence of their own eyes as to your success. 
Then they become your fiercest competitors. 

Philrod became waspish, very unpopular. I was 
frequently reduced to tears by my secret fears that 
these people, who ought to know the land, were 
right and that now nothing could save Redfields 
plantation from sinking beneath the weight of two 
mortgages. 

Still the curing plant went up rapidly in spite of 
cold snaps, when it was impossible to work in 
cement. It turned out to be an ugly, square build¬ 
ing with a sort of insect countenance. This was 
due to the great number of pipes that stuck out of 
it like the eyes of an immense beetle. 

There was a small stream which ran along the 
lower edge of the potato held and emptied into the 
river. During the midsummer months it was fre¬ 
quently dry, but in the winter and spring the water 
flowed steadily. Philrod declared that this was an 
ideal place for his potato seed beds, because there 
would be water to keep them moist. He made them 
along the bank, three feet wide, each one two hun¬ 
dred and fifty feet long. They were filled with 
stable manure, so much mulch and a soft sandy 
coverlet of loam. We had a carload of potatoes 
chosen from his last year’s crop at the plant. Every 

291 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


one of them, he assured me, was the “perfect pat¬ 
tern” of what a potato ought to be in size and 
form. These were treated with corrosive sublimate, 
three per cent in water—a sort of delousing bath to 
insure them against diseases and parasites. Before 
the end of March they were bedded and covered 
properly with sand and loam. 

And Winch was turning land in the bottoms for 
corn and hay. I was resolved not to make the mis¬ 
take of depending on one crop. The place must 
support man and beasts upon it and cover expense 
of cultivation. This was sound doctrine. 

Philrod had his old potato planters down by this 
time and he was busy repairing them behind Winch’s 
blacksmith shop. I was back there one day taking 
a lesson in what these machines could be made to do. 
They carried water tank and fertilizer distributor. 
There were two seats close to the ground behind 
for two men who handled the slips, and a rack above 
for a box or basket large enough to hold a thousand 
slips. 

“We must have slow teams to draw these 
planters,” he told me. “The slower the better.” 

“Mine creep,” I assured him. 

“And we must have boys to set the slips,” he 
said. 

“Why boys*?” I wanted to know. 

“Men who have farmed automatically for years, 

292 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


doing always the same things, lose their mental ac¬ 
tivity. They lack the swift coordination between 
the brain and the hand necessary in this work,” he 
explained. 

I told him we should have no difficulty in having 
enough youngsters from sixteen to eighteen for the 
season. 

“Oh, we shall not need them for more than two 
weeks. Ought to plant the whole held in ten days.” 

I came round the corner of the blacksmith shop 
counting on my fingers the boys available in the 
community for this work. I was looking down at 
my fingers as I named them, “Bill” and “Bob,” and 
so on. Thus it happened that I stumbled into Black 
Manson. 

“Good afternoon, Miss McPherson!” he ex¬ 
claimed, laughing as I thrust my hands against him. 

“How do you do!” I gasped. 

“Shoeing a horse back there?” 

“No, counting my fingers,” I retorted. 

“So I perceived. The forefinger on your left hand 
is named ‘Billy’ and the next ‘Bob.’ I distinctly 
heard you calling them by these—er—epithets. I 
was surprised.” 

“Eavesdroppers frequently are,” I answered, 
smiling. 

We were now in full view of the curing plant. 

“Warehouse?” he asked, catching my eye after 

293 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


he had swept this building with a glance and a grin. 

“Yes, I suppose it is something of the sort,” I 
answered. 

“Looks like a livery stable.” 

“Well, it isn’t!” I retorted. 

“My car is over there at Tinkham’s store. Want 
to go for a spin 4 ?” 

“No, thanks,” without making an excuse for this 
refusal. 

“You have never asked me to Redfields,” he sug¬ 
gested. 

“No,” I admitted. 

He laughed. 

“One other question,” eyeing me provocatively. 

“Well?” 

“They are not all named, are they?” 

“To whom do you refer?” 

“Your fingers. I was wondering if I might have 
the honor of christening one of them—the third on 
your left hand.” 

My color rose. I hoped it looked like anger. 
Then the wings of my utterly feminine mind flew 
up and disclosed a thought, lightly and mischie¬ 
vously vindictive. 

I regarded him with a widening smile. 

“On one condition,” I said. 

“On any condition,” he returned. 

294 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

“That you will faithfully perform the task I had 
in mind when I was naming my fingers.” 

“I will,” he answered so solemnly that I 
laughed. 

“Though that is not the way such vows usually 
read,” he added. 

“Very well, you are employed then,” taking no 
notice of his last remark. 

“Employed 4 ?” 

“Yes, your wages will be a dollar and a half a 
day.” * 

“For how long 4 ?” 

“Two weeks.” 

“And the third finger of your left hand is to be 
named for me, during that period. It’s dirt cheap 
for such an honor!” 

“Oh,” drawing back from this proposition. 

“I have your word,” he reminded me. 

“Very well. It makes no difference. I will notify 
you when we are ready for you.” 

“Now, will you ride with me?” 

“No.” Without the “thanks” this time. 

We had reached the steps of Tinkham’s store. 
He laughed, climbed into his car, lifted his hat and 
was gone. 

I felt better, happier than I had felt in months. 
My breast seemed filled with a thousand flittering 

295 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


wings of happiness. I went in and pranced a step 
or two toward Mrs. Tinkham. Then I halted, as¬ 
tonished at the stern gravity of her expression. 

“Nancy, do you know what is going on?” 

“No.” 

“You haven’t heard anything?” 

“Not a word.” 

“Well, Bruce Armstead is drunk, crazy drunk. 
He is after Black Manson.” 

“What for?” 

“On account of Bonnie.” 

She looked away. 

“I don’t say Manson is to blame. I doubt if he 
ever encouraged her. But a man doesn’t have to en¬ 
courage a girl like that. And she was crazy about 
him.” 

“What if she was?” I heard myself say. 

“Well, Bruce wants to make something out of it. 
I have my reasons for thinking he has tried to black¬ 
mail Manson, and failed. Now it’s out everywhere 
that he aims to get Manson! He and his gang are 
gathering down here at Shuckpen Eddy on the river. 
Claim to be Ku-Klux. I don’t know what they are 
about. But Tinkham is all stirred up. And it takes 
something to rile Tinkham.” 

“When, when—” 

“To-night,” she answered this unfinished ques¬ 
tion. 


296 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


“I was tempted to warn Manson just now,” she 
went on. 

“Why didn’t you?” 

“Well, some things ain’t a woman’s business.” 

“Where is Mr. Tinkham?” 

“I don’t know where he is. I don’t know where 
anybody is. There ain’t a man round here. I’ve got 
to take the mail over myself to the train,” bustling 
into the little post office. 


297 


PART EIGHT 


CHAPTER XXIV 

I hurried home after this talk with Mrs. Tink- 
ham, too anxious to settle down in the library after 
supper as usual. I walked back and forth on the 
veranda. The weather was mild. There was a 
great silver moon in the east and the night was full 
of stars, like that first night after I came home in 
June. But now the air was laden with the faint 
fragrance of spring flowers. I could make out the 
long low pile of Black Manson’s cabin in the edge 
of the forest on the hills beyond the river. But 
there was no light in the windows. He was not at 
home, I concluded with a sigh of relief. 

Then as I faced about and came back toward 
the western end of the veranda I saw every window 
glowing. 

My heart stood still. He was in this house alone, 
without any warning of what was brewing! Per¬ 
haps nothing was, perhaps something horrible. 
During this year night riders of one sort and an¬ 
other had committed frightful crimes. 

I remembered having heard him tell the Locks 

299 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


that he had at last put in a telephone, and laugh¬ 
ingly refused to give the name of his exchange. 

There are moments in every woman’s life when 
her heart makes up her mind for her regardless of 
her plans and prejudices. I flew back into the house, 
called “information,” and asked for Black Man- 
son’s number. An age seemed to pass before I re¬ 
ceived it, but almost at once after giving it to Cen¬ 
tral his voice came through to my ear. 

“Well.” The one word, spoken in the business 
tones of a man practiced in telephone tactics. 

I recovered instantly from a flash of unreasonable 
resentment, realizing that he could not know yet 
who had called him. 

“Mr. Manson, this is Nancy McPherson speak- 

* 5 ? 

mg. 

“Best news I ever had over a wire,” he returned, 
in a voice smoothed to a big round note of softness. 

“Mr. Manson,” I began. 

“Yes, what is it? Please say it, anything!” 

I understood from the lightness of this retort that 
he had no sense of impending danger, no thoughts 
beyond the insurgent thoughts a man thinks when 
he speaks to the woman. 

“Can you come over this evening?” I asked. 

“I shall be delighted,” after the briefest hesita¬ 
tion. This capitulation had taken him by surprise, 
I inferred. 


300 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


“If you could come at once,” I began. 

“Anything the matter 4 ? Your father—” in a seri¬ 
ous tone. 

“No,” I interrupted. “I must see you. It is im¬ 
portant.” 

“I am practically on my way!” with a puzzled 
laugh. 

“Come through the fields; it is nearer,” I said 
hurriedly, and hung up the receiver. 

I dared not warn him, knowing that in that case 
he would remain there and defend himself. 

But when I returned to the veranda five minutes 
later the lights were still burning in Black Manson’s 
house. This meant that he had not left it. Pres¬ 
ently I saw the figure of a man appear in the door¬ 
way, stand for a moment, then drift down into the 
darkness. But the lights still burned. I realized 
that he could not have been Manson. There was 
something angular, crooked and thin about that 
figure. I stood trembling, wondering what this 
meant. Some one had been in the house with Black 
Manson since he talked with me over the 'phone. 
For I was sure he was alone then, by the frankness 
and intimacy of his manner. And I had just time to 
see a man pass out of the doorway over there. I 
could not be mistaken. The light in the room had 
clearly defined him. The ringing of the telephone 

301 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

bell startled me. I hurried in, took up the receiver 
and answered. 

“Miss McPherson,” came Black Manson’s voice. 

“Yes. Are you coming 4 ?” 

“That’s it. Impossible for me to get over to¬ 
night. To-morrow evening, any other day—” 

“But I want you to come now,” I interrupted. 

“Tremendously good of you. I’m grateful, 
but you understand that under the circumstances I 
could not afford to be away from—well, my own 
house.” 

“Is there any one—are you alone 4 ?” 

“Yes. Don’t worry. Nothing will happen. 
Good night.” 

I went back onto the veranda and stood watching 
his house for a long time. Nothing moved up there 
and the lights glowed steadily, as if their business 
was to make this cabin the most conspicuous object 
for miles. Hours seemed to pass while I walked 
back and forth, resting at intervals on the wall, but 
always with my eyes fixed on those beacon windows 
in the cabin across the river. At last I heard faintly 
the barking of a dog far down the road. At the 
same moment I saw Manson bulk large in his door¬ 
way for a moment, then sit down on the step, his 
head and shoulders still outlined by the light be¬ 
hind him. Now in every direction for miles the 
dogs were barking their warning of passers-by in 

302 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


the night. Presently I heard faintly the clatter of 
horses’ hoofs coming nearer. And then the horror 
swept by, sheeted figures riding swiftly and silently 
along the road below. Then they appeared in the 
field, making no sound in the softer earth until they 
came to the river bridge, across which they swept like 
thunder, and up the hill, bunched together. 

There was a succession of loud reports. I had 
one glimpse of the darkness blooming up there with 
long, red, bugle-shaped flowers. Then I seemed to 
die myself. 

When I recovered consciousness the night was 
very still. I sat up and leaned against the column 
behind me. Manson’s cabin showed dark against 
the rim of the hill. And once more I saw a man 
approaching, walking through the shadows on the 
lawn. 

“Nancy,” came a familiar voice. “What are you 
doing out here*?” 

“Doctor Fosberry!” 

He sat down on the wall and grinned at me as if 
at last he knew something personal to me which was 
very gratifying to him. 

“Manson asked me to stop by and in case you 
were awake—which you should not be; it is twelve 
o’clock—I was to tell you everything passed off 
nicely.” 

“Where is he?” 


303 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


“Well, he should be in Cameron by this time, at 
the rate he was going,” he interpolated. “Got Bruce 
Armstead hog-tied in the car with him, taking him 
to the sheriff. He is not badly hurt.” 

“Who is hurt?” 

“Bruce. Manson got him through the shoulder. 
This ends his career as our official bad man, I 
imagine.” 

“But what happened, and what was it all about?” 
I asked. 

“Oh, I don’t know. Spite, I suppose. Bruce 
gathered his gang to-night, went over to call on 
Manson. Meant mischief all right. Manson was 
waiting for him; could have killed him. The others 
turned tail. I thought sure from the racket we’d 
find a dozen dead men.” 

“You knew they were coming?” 

“Tinkham got wind of it somehow. He was at 
Manson’s early in the evening. Let him know what 
was on foot. Couldn’t budge Manson. Then he 
came on to tell me. We were just coming through 
the woods on the other side when the show began. 
All we saw of it was a dozen sheeted horsemen flying 
in every direction and Manson standing with his 
foot on Bruce Armstead’s neck as we turned the 
corner of the house. It’s refreshing, a thing like 
that!” he concluded amiably. 

“But is it lawful?” 


304 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

“Oh, yes, perfectly legal. Racket wake you?’ 

“Yes.” 

“Manson thought it might disturb you,” looking 
down at me, still fully dressed, with a thoughtful 
air. “So he asked me to come by. Now you must 
be off to bed,” taking me by the hand and guiding 
me gently into the house. 

“Can you make it?” at the foot of the stairs. 

“Oh, yes,” I quavered, setting my foot 
tremblingly on the step. 

“I say, Nancy,” he interrupted, “look here.” 

I held to the banister and regarded him with what 
the novelist calls a “piteous look.” 

“Don’t be a fool, lass. The best men won’t stand 
too much of it. You know what I mean.” 

“Who advised me to fight Black Manson, and to 
hold this place, and to—to—” I stammered off into 
tears. 

“Yes, yes, I did, and you are coming fine. You 
are sure to win out. Philrod has told me all about 
the potato business. But while you are about it take 
all that’s coming to you.” 

“HI have the land first, every acre of it. That’s 
as far as I have got in my plans,” I answered with 
a tearful smile. 

“Um-hump!” he said, whatever that may mean. 
But he had the manner of one who bears away with 
him important information. 

305 


CHAPTER XXV 


It was the middle of May before the potato slips 
were ready to put out. And there were eleven 
youths champing at the bits, waiting for the very 
novel experience of sitting under these rickety old 
machines to do this work. But there were only 
eleven of them, Philrod pointed out, and for six 
planters he needed twelve boys. He would be ready 
to begin the next morning. The season was fine, 
and there was no time to lose. 

“Could you use a very tall man?’ I asked. 

“Oh, I could use anything whose two hands are 
connected with his brains,” he replied irritably. 

“Very well. I think we can get him,” I said, 
hurrying into the house. 

Ten minutes later I dispatched the following note 
to Black Manson: 

Redfields House, May 20, 1921. 

Dear Mr. Manson: You will recall an agree¬ 
ment we made sometime in March to the effect that 
for the privilege of christening one of the smaller 
fingers on my left hand you would do the same 
work at the same wage that Bills and Bobs demand. 
I should not remind you of this contract so lightly 

306 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


made, but we are short a hand for the planters. 
And I am therefore asking you to report to Mr. 
Philrod in the morning at five o’clock. 

Believe me, my dear Mr. Manson,— 

Cordially yours, 

Nancy McPherson. 

Since the night of the attempted assault upon 
him by Bruce Armstead he had been a frequent visi¬ 
tor at Redfields. But I had not too meekly regarded 
Doctor Fosberry’s advice about making a fool of 
myself. I practiced a sort of romantic neutrality, 
which at first encouraged and finally incensed Man- 
son. His uncertainty arose not from the fact that 
he was a man of the world prepared to make conces¬ 
sions if he must, but from the fact that I was a 
woman of the world, highly proficient in the arts of 
this profession where men were concerned, and prob¬ 
ably secretly vindictive besides so far as he was con¬ 
cerned. 

The next morning I went to the potato field, ar¬ 
riving at eleven o’clock, late enough for the labor 
and heat of the day to have taken effect upon any 
man not designed by Nature for the planting of 
slips by this method. I wore a summer frock, a 
garden hat, proud high-heel pumps and a pleasant 
smile. 

Six teams were creeping along the rows in the 
field, six planters creaked behind, and beneath every 

307 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

one sat two men working with frightful rapidity to 
get a slip set correctly, every two feet of space. 

Philrod caught sight of me and came on, walking 
very fast, as if anger had reached his lower ex¬ 
tremities. 

“This is no joke,” he announced fiercely. 

“No, it looks like business, doesn’t it?” I an¬ 
swered amiably. 

“What, what did you send Manson for?” he stut¬ 
tered. 

“He applied for the job,” I returned innocently. 

“Applied for it, did he! Well, there’s something 
the matter with him then!” he snorted. 

“Why, is he inefficient?” 

“Oh, he can plant slips. He can beat the field at 
that, but look at him!” waving recklessly at the ma¬ 
chine which was now passing nearest where we stood. 

I stared and rocked with silent mirth. Black 
Manson, wearing a fine white shirt and black-broad- 
cloth trousers, sat folded up like a jackknife on his 
side of the planter. I could see only the back of his 
head between the huge knobs of his knees. But his 
hands were moving with the rhythm of a musician. 

“He’s been in that fix since five o’clock this morn¬ 
ing. Never saw anything like it. And it won’t 
do!” 

“No, it will not. Why don’t you turn him off?” 
I suggested. 


308 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


“Turn him off, eh? How? What will I say? 
He plants slips.” 

“Tell him he is physically unfit for this job.” 

He made a gesture. Did I think he would tell 
a man like that he was physically unfit? Not much! 

“Well, ask him to resign then. That is the polite 
way of getting rid of a man,” I said, walking away 
daintily along the edge of the field keeping pace 
with Manson’s planter until I came again to the 
road which led back to Redfields house. 

In the evening I had a call on the telephone from 
Manson. He wanted to know if he might come 
over. 

I waited for him, seated in one of the old Wind¬ 
sor chairs on the veranda. He came up smiling, 
looking very fit in his formal evening clothes. 

“Why did you have me discharged?” he asked, 
still smiling as he dropped into the chair beside me, 
giving it a turn which brought us face to face. 

“Were you discharged?” I asked mildly. 

“Amounted to that. Philrod told me you had 
called for my resignation. He was as formal about 
it as if I had been chairman of a committee!” 

I laughed. Philrod certainly was totally deficient 
in humor. 

“Why did you do it?” he repeated. 

“It was a silly joke. I did not think you would 
carry it so far.” 


309 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


“As a joke, no. I thought it was your woman’s 
way of yielding.” 

“I don’t understand,” and I really did not. 

“The wedding-ring linger.” 

“How absurd.” 

“Of course, but girls are sometimes.” 

“You mean they sneak through their own de¬ 
fenses to you?” regarding him with a curiosity 
which was slowly confirming into resentment. 

“Something like that. And the prouder she is 
the more likely she is to do it,” dropping the plural 
of “girls.” 

“You have had experience,” I put in as a sort of 
footnote. 

“We both have had experience. It has made you 
unscrupulous, more unscrupulous in dealing with 
your lovers than the shrewdest speculator in—well, 
shall we say, land?” 

I was indignant. My conscience was so clear in 
this matter. 

“We have been like lovers from the first,” he 
went on. 

“Like lovers!” I repeated indignantly. 

“Of course we have. How else was I to interpret 
your antagonism? How else could you my unyield¬ 
ing attitude about the land? The whole thing was 
an 'act,' 1 lovers who are skilled in love stage. The 
silly lines I said, your pretty silences. Your 

* 310 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


flushes and smiles and tears. We know them all by 
heart. But I thought—” he finished this sentence 
with a look which subtracted something from me. 

“Well, what did you think 4 ?” I demanded. 

“I thought you were fair; a good sport, who could 
be trusted to play the trump card you held and 
finish the game right.” He emphasized this last 
word. 

“You have completely misunderstood me,” I said, 
after taking a little time to decide whether he was 
still reciting the man’s lines in this “act,” and con¬ 
cluding that he was now off the stage. 

“You think of me just as a woman,” I went on. 

“Just that. A man does. It is enough, heaven 
knows!” he retorted. 

“Well, in this business I am not. I have felt all 
of a man’s passion and purpose when it came to 
saving this property from your grasp.” 

“And you financed with all of a woman’s arts. 
You have known from the beginning that I loved 
you, that I wanted you for my wife.” 

“I know that I have been nearer hating you than 
any man living,” I fired back. 

“I understood that. Most women love at first by 
hating. It is Nature’s law.” 

Suddenly he leaned forward, caught both of my 
hands in his. “Nancy,” he exclaimed, “you do love 
me. I have known it since the day of the storm.” 

311 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


“I do not even hate you now. I feel that I shall 
win. This land, it will be mine again. I shall be 
able to pay the mortgage. The feeling I have, it is 
better than love, happier,” I returned, regarding him 
calmly. 

“And Big Woods?” 

“All in good time,” I retorted. 

“If I gave it back?” 

“For what?” 

“To please you.” 

“I am not so easily pleased. I’ll not be bound by 
the gift of what is already mine!” I cried. 

He released me, leaned back and stared at me 
with a sort of pitying approval. 

“What a brave one you are, my dear,” he said 
gently. “How straight and cruel. Valor, it be¬ 
comes you, but how you will suffer for this courage!” 

“Don’t patronize me with your compassion,” 
feeling that hateful prescience of tears. 

He had risen, as if to go. Now he looked down 
at me with a sort of smile. 

“Why do tears in a woman’s eyes always rebuke 
a man, however innocent he may be?” he asked 
softlv. 

“In mine they are the proof of anger,” I retorted. 

“And when you love and when you suffer, they 
come telling the truth of you. Well, I will not 
leave them there this time!” 

312 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


The next moment he had drawn me to him, held 
me with my face lifted in his strong hand as he 
kissed my eyes. Then he returned me to the chair, 
much as if I were a token he had folded away— 
and was gone. 

I felt very strange. I do not say virtue had gone 
out of me, but something had. If you are fair, if 
you have red hair, candid blue eyes and forty gifts 
of tears and smiles, it is not reasonable to reach the 
thirtieth year of your opulent youth without hav¬ 
ing been more or less kissed; but never before had 
such a thievery felt like a fatal accident. I suf¬ 
fered. I would never be the same again! And I 
am not. However many lovers one may have had 
there is at last, I believe, only one man’s kiss that 
seals a woman’s heart forever. 


313 


CHAPTER XXVI 


A week later I went into Tinkham’s store on 
some small errand. 

“Have you heard the news?” Mrs. Tinkham 
asked. 

“Is there any?” I asked. 

“Black Manson has gone,” she announced. 

“He is always going somewhere, isn’t he?” 

“He is gone for good this time, they say. Rented 
his crops and his house to some fellow out of the 
agricultural college. He’s moved in, the man has. 
Got a wife and baby.” 

When I made no reply she looked up from the 
notion counter, caught my eye inquisitively. 

“I reckon Manson’s gone back where he came 
from,” she said. 

I said I knew nothing of the change in Mr. 
Manson’s plans, that this was the first I had heard 
about it. 

“Folks around here think you sent him the same 
way you sent that other fellow back to New York 
last fall,” she laughed knowingly. 

“One cannot be held accountable for what people 
think,” I returned coolly. 

314 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

“Don’t you ever expect to marry, Nancy*?” 

“Not wilfully,” I answered, laughing in spite of 
myself. 

“Well, I would if I were in your place and had 
the chances you throw away. That’s two good hus¬ 
bands gone, you might have had.” 

“Oh, not two, Mrs. Tinkham!” I objected. 

“Either one of ’em is what I meant. You will 
wish you had, first thing you know. Maybe you 
can be independent, make your own fortune, but 
you’ll get ugly and sickly. Yes, you will,” she in¬ 
sisted at the sound of my laughter. “And if you 
keep your health you’ll get crotchety. Old maids 
are. They ain’t right in their minds, I tell you!” 

The spring waxed and warmed into summer days; 
long bright days of silence set to the tune of droning 
bees, filled with bloom and scent and the growth 
of every green thing. The world was noisy with 
strife. The time of accounting for deeds done dur¬ 
ing the war had arrived. There was a terrific de¬ 
faulting of great men’s reputations. There were the 
adjustments to be made to conditions of peace. No 
more patriotic wages for labor. We must econo¬ 
mize, and we had lost the sense of thrift—therefore 
much futile preaching of thrift, while poverty, grim 
and grinning, came slipping by in rags to enforce 
thrift. The news was all bad. Strikers were strik- 

315 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

ing. Capital was squalling under the burden of 
taxes. Politicians were raving and scheming and 
tearing at the fabric of this civilization. Yet it 
held, not by the laws and laws enacted nor by the 
deliberations of Congress nor the changing of politi¬ 
cal parties in power, but by the silent people behind 
these summer hills who worked the will of God in 
the land with a weary patience. The thing will hold 
together so long as capital makes profits, and the 
Government can raise taxes for prodigal expendi¬ 
tures and so long as the strikers and everybody else 
are fed. So it is the toilers on the land, ordained 
with the curse of Adam, who insure the peace and 
prosperity of the world; neither princes nor premiers 
nor presidents nor paunch-bodied congresses. 

The press was laden that year with messages to 
farmers, urging them to save and work and produce 
big crops with as little expense as possible. But the 
farmers had no time to read this propaganda. They 
were up in the gray dawn of these long days and in 
their fields. And they were lost in the sleep of 
exhaustion before the night life of the propagandists 
began. There can be no labor-union hours for the 
man who wins his bread and yours from the earth. 

This, my masters, was the only victory won 
against the disorders of the year 1921; the harvests 
that paid debts and fed the country and held back 
the furies of hunger. 


316 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

There was a long drought, but as it happened the 
seasons were favorable in these parts, and the 
crops good. 

The potato held was a miracle of spreading green 
loveliness. In August Philrod relaxed. He became 
an agreeable man. The worst of it was over, he as¬ 
sured me. The potatoes were there. He thought 
the average would be above four hundred bushels to 
the acre. If we had a light frost early in October 
the harvesting would begin at once. 

“There remains only the risk of curing them. 
After that we can take our time!” he said, rubbing 
his hands together. 

“No danger of overstocked markets. No danger 
from railroad strikes. They will keep! keep! I 
tell you! And we could sell the last bushel of them 
right now.’ 5 

“We might begin to sell as soon as possible,” I 
suggested. 

“Well, no. The prices will go up as soon as the 
uncured potatoes are out of the markets,” he 
told me. “We must wait for a higher price. It 
costs fifty cents a bushel to raise, cure, load potatoes 
and ship them to the markets. That would leave 
a clear profit of one dollar at the lowest market 
price.” 

This, I figured hastily, meant forty thousand 
dollars. Well, not exactly, he said. We must take 

317 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


six per cent off for waste, and the like. I was 
willing, on the assurance that we would exceed four 
hundred bushels to the acre. 

My happiness was a singular thing those days. It 
consisted of an empty triumph over an enemy who 
had withdrawn from the held. I had heard nothing 
from Black Manson. I knew the time would come 
after the excitement of this achievement was over 
when I should be unhappy. I was even now vaguely 
desolate, with that hungering and thirsting after the 
mail one suffers when one hopes for letters which do 
not come. Finally one came from Katherine Lock. 
This was in September. They would be reasonably 
successful with their potatoes she wrote, but they 
had gone in on such a big scale that they could not 
hope for profits yet, not for two or three years. And 
she did not like Arkansas. It might be a good place 
for potatoes, but not for human beings as distantly 
related to sweet potatoes as she was! 

She wondered if I had heard the news about Black 
Manson. “Poor Black, 5 ’ she wrote, “has had an¬ 
other turn! He has been out here with us for a 
month, just following his nose around. He has 
given up that farm he had in Georgia, expects to sell 
it this fall, he told Hammie. And he may or he may 
not go back to New York. Anyhow he left for the 
East last night. I told him he should get married. 
Nothing settles a man like having a wife hung like a 

318 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

millstone round his neck. I have always blamed 
Hammie for not bringing him out to the house for 
dinner the evening you were there. He certainly 
was in love with you. But love is a thing you must 
fan in a man, or the poor little flame goes out! So 
there you are, Nancy darling, planning to be a 
potato queen when you might have been a social 
queen and the wife of a rich man. Well, I did my 
best. Now write me how you and Philrod are com¬ 
ing on with your potatoes. Is he as crabbed as 
ever 5 ?”—and so on and so forth. 

The next mail brought a letter which told the 
world in the right-hand corner at the top of the 
envelop that it was from the New York Trust and 
Savings Bank. I had that sinking sensation one 
always feels when he receives a letter from his credi¬ 
tor. For it was through this concern that Lock had 
negotiated the loan of twenty thousand dollars with 
which I had financed my potato crop. The interest 
on this second mortgage would be due presently and 
as I opened the letter I supposed it contained a noti¬ 
fication of this harsh truth. 

My surprise was very great. It was in fact a 
letter from some official of this bank who informed 
me briefly that he represented Mr. Manson. Mr. 
Manson had requested him to sell the Big Woods 
property. He understood that this land was adja¬ 
cent to my own plantation, had at one time been a 

319 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

part of that estate. Mr. Manson had suggested 
therefore that I should be given the refusal of it. 
The price was six thousand dollars, exactly what it 
had originally cost. If I cared to purchase it the 
terms were easy. Mr. Manson’s object, he believed, 
was to dispose of a piece of property in which he 
was no longer interested. If I was interested he 
suggested that I see Mr. Brown in Atlanta, who 
represented the New York Trust and Savings Bank 
and had instructions about making this sale. 

Briefly, this was what the letter contained, but 
what it suggested to my mind cast me into the very 
dust of humiliation. I had probably borrowed that 
second twenty thousand dollars from Black Man- 
son ! I had given Black Manson a second mortgage 
on Redflelds plantation through this bank. I was 
more than ever in the financial clutches of this man. 
It was like his sardonic impudence to place me in 
this position. Lock had been the unconscious instru¬ 
ment. It was natural that he should have applied 
to Manson for that loan, not knowing anything of 
the relations between us, but it was Machiavellian 
in Manson to take advantage of me. 

I laid my head on my arm, leaning upon the old 
secretary in the library, and wept furiously. Then 
I thought of something else which cooled my rage 
and staunched these tears like ice water. Granting 
that Manson had really meant to be generous in this 

320 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

matter because he was in love with me, the fact that 
he now coolly offered Big Woods because he was 
“no longer interested in this property” was signifi¬ 
cant. When a man who has been your lover com¬ 
municates with you through his agent it feels like 
divorce proceedings, and certainly indicates the ter¬ 
mination of all relations. The last act of his in¬ 
difference was to place within my reach what I 
claimed to value above love and every other con¬ 
sideration, the land, the whole of Redhelds planta¬ 
tion. I had preferred to make my vows to this land, 
not to him. 

I felt suddenly what a coldly impersonal thing 
the land is. You may indeed be from the dust of 
it, and you will certainly be returned to become the 
richer dust of it, but after all it is a part of the 
earth which swings in an orbit and turns herself this 
way and that to the warming sun, as regardless of 
you as of the smallest, palest flower that blooms 
somewhere quite by accident upon her mighty breast. 
In this awful moment I realized that for a woman 
to miss love was to miss the very breath and bloom 
of life. 

Still I retained the mettle of the pasture from 
which I had sprung—a sort of courage. I could 
not afford to add to my indebtedness at this time, 
but I would buy Big Woods. Manson should not 
bluff me. 


321 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

I left for Atlanta the next day, reaching the city 
after the banks were closed and was obliged to wait 
until the next morning to see Mr. Brown. The 
purchase was made, the deeds were drawn and the 
bond for title given. I had three years in which to 
pay for Big Woods. 

I returned to Redfields that afternoon, being 
obliged to take a taxi from Cameron because this 
train did not stop at Redfields station. 

I cannot tell how it was, but as we came up from 
the public road through the two poplar trees on the 
lawn I was suddenly aware of a strange silence, as 
if some presence which belonged to this peaceful 
silence was gone. There was the sunlight, the poplar 
leaves turning like a thousand tiny fans in the wind. 
But somewhere in all this motion and brightness 
there was a stillness. This was a feeling I had, not 
a thought. We had scarcely reached the veranda 
before I thrust open the door of the car and was out 
looking about me with this strange startled feeling. 
What was the difference 4 ? Ah! the blinds of the 
windows were closed, as if after so many years this 
old house rested from some fever of life within. 
At the same moment the front door opened and I 
saw Mrs. Broadwick standing in it. She was no 
longer homely, she was majestic. Homely people 
can never be beautiful, but sometimes they can sur¬ 
pass mere human beauty, as the tops of mountains 

322 


A DAUGHTER OE ADAM 

surpass a pretty garden path. I thought all that 
later. Now I felt myself folded in her arms. 

“What is it, what has happened here 4 ?” I cried. 

“Your father. He has gone. Last night, quite 
peacefully,” she said, leading me into the library. 

I sat staring at her, a woman somehow replen¬ 
ished by this death. 

“I was with him. He asked for me.” A curious 
brightness passed over her face, like the light be¬ 
tween shadows on that mountain top. 

“Everything is done,” she said, making a motion 
with her head toward the door of the parlor, which 
was closed. “He is in there alone with that other 
Kedie McPherson standing above him in his tall 
frame.” 

She stroked my hand. 

“I am glad you were away. Youth was never 
meant to see death. But for me it was a privilege. 
It is strange after all these years, after life had 
come and gone from us, I still loved him!” 

I caught one glimpse of the bliss which had trans¬ 
figured her, and fell to weeping with my head upon 
her breast. 


323 


CHAPTER XXVII 


The end of October was at hand before I again 
left Redhelds house. I was not ill, but the long 
strain took its toll suddenly of my strength. Mrs. 
Broadwick remained with me during these shadowy 
days when I lay too weak and listless to think or to 
suffer. It was not difficult to persuade her to take 
up her residence there during the coming winter 
months. 

The first day I was able to sit in the sunshine 
on the veranda I heard her inside at the ’phone. 
She was talking to some one in the rambling tones 
of authority with which she invariably did busi¬ 
ness. I understood presently that she had Philrod 
on the line, and that Philrod was giving a satisfac¬ 
tory account of his stewardship. 

“Well, you may come over this afternoon and 
tell Miss McPherson all that. She is up, but she 
needs a little stimulant to bring her to her feet and 
to her doing mind.” 

Philrod came, bearing a book, which he told me 
contained the “scriptures of the potato crop.” I 
knew by his cat-whiskered grin that the news would 
be good. 


324 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 

The potatoes were in the curing house, forty-four 
thousand bushels of the finest Nancy Halls he had 
ever seen. There would be sixty-eight carloads. 
That was not bad for the first year. He had been up 
night and day last week at the plant. 

‘‘Ticklish business, putting a hard coat of sugar 
on that many potatoes in four days!” he said. 
“Change of temperature, rain, might be fatal if you 
are not right there to regulate the heat accord¬ 
ingly.” 

“Just how is it done 4 ?” I wanted to know. 

“Was that in the contract? That I should tell 
you how it is done?” he asked with a cunning grin. 

“No, but I want to know just the same,” I in¬ 
sisted. 

He crossed his legs, primped his mouth until his 
gray mustaches stuck out like the wings of a moth, 
cocked his eye at me, and, I am sure, considered the 
unreliable nature of women as confidantes. He was 
entirely justified, as this record shows, because I 
am setting down here the important secret of this 
process of curing sweet potatoes. It is not a ro¬ 
mantic statement, but the truth which in a few 
years will bring wealth to many farmers in the South 
who are now being reduced to starvation by the boll 
weevil. So much cotton land is adapted to the cul¬ 
tivation of sweet potatoes. 

“In the first place we should have built a larger 

325 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


curing plant. I shall be obliged to ship several car¬ 
loads green. There was not enough bins to hold 
more than forty thousand bushels.” 

“Ship them at once. We need the money. I do 
most awfully,” I put in. 

“The weather was favorable. Good frost, no 
rain. I got them sorted and in the bins ten days 
ago. And I turned on the heat at once.” 

He lowered his voice to the conspirator’s under¬ 
tone. 

“For four days and four nights I kept the tem¬ 
perature in every one of those bins up to seventy 
degrees. I had trays of calschloride at the place 
where the air goes into the pipes to dry it, absorb the 
moisture. This heat, and this method of keeping out 
moisture and taking it out for four days and four 
nights vulcanized the last one of them, you may 
say, with a hard coat of sugar, leaving the potato 
inside juicy and heavy, not dried out, because that 
is the old process, and we aim at keeping it in its 
original state. You can see what a difference that 
will make in the value of the potato as a food.” 

Yes, I understood. 

“Then,” he went on, “I cooled ’em down to forty- 
six degrees. Not so easy, that! Had to fan air out 
of a refrigerator one day. But they must be kept 
now at a temperature of forty-six degrees!” 

“That is the secret,” he added after a pause. 

326 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


“And this is all you do 4 ?” I wanted to know. 

He nodded his head affirmatively. “It’s enough 
to keep you on the jump, I can tell you, until the 
work is done. Too much heat ruins ’em. And 
they must be kept cool afterwards, not difficult dur¬ 
ing the winter and spring. All you have to know is 
how to manage your heating system and watch the 
changes in the weather while the curing is going on. 
You’ve got forty thousand dollars’ worth of pota¬ 
toes now safe and ready for the markets, besides 
about two gross tons of green potatoes. Could not 
get them in. How does that strike you 4 ?” he asked 
with a broad grin. 

I was elated. I wanted my coat and hat. We 
must go over there and look at those potatoes. 

He was obdurate. Not yet! No opening of 
doors and fanning around in that place for another 
week! 

Then he showed me his list of brokers, the prices 
they offered, the number of carloads each one would 
take. 

“If Mr. Hoover knew about these potatoes he’d 
be shipping the whole lot to starving children some¬ 
where on the other side!” I said. 

“Well, they could be shipped all right, and there 
is more nutriment in one roasted sweet potato than 
in three or four loaves of bread.” 

The prices of potatoes advanced steadily until 

327 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


March, when we sold seed potatoes for two hundred 
and seventy dollars a ton. 

In the back of a worn notebook I find this legend 
of that year’s business; written with a pencil, the 
tip of which I must have moistened between my 
lips from time to time, because some of the figures 
are ferociously black, others dim, as if they ap¬ 
peared there timidly, feeling out of place in a lady’s 
notebook, filled for the most part with shopping 
lists, and knowing very well that they were not 
arranged properly according to any system of book¬ 
keeping. Still I contend that the record had char¬ 
acter, the personal touch, approaching the dramatic 
in its totals which cannot be found in any page 
written by an expert accountant. Here it is: 


I owe first Redfields mortgage. $20,000 

I owe second Redfields mortgage. 20,000 

I owe interest on both. 3,200 

I owe for Big Woods. 6,000 

I owe for household and farm expense . . . 8,000 


Total. $57,200 

I made by sale of hay. $ 500 

I made by sale of corn. 600 

I made by sale of four milch cows. 200 

I made by sale of potatoes. 43,000 


Total. $44,300 

328 














A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


Have paid first mortgage with interest . . $21,600 
Have paid second mortgage with interest 21,600 


Debts paid . 

Balance due, $57,200 — $44,300 


$43,200 

$12,900 


I still owe with interest, $6,000 + $12,900 $18,900 

N.B.—Must borrow $10,000 to enlarge potato 
plant and finance next year’s crop. 

This is not a bad balance sheet, barring the 
somewhat emotional manner of its arrangement; 
not even the last item. For I was paying the legal 
rate of eight per cent on these mortgages. It was 
better to pay them off, because I could take this 
balance sheet into any bank and on the evidence 
it contained I could borrow money at six per 
cent. 

The horrific thing that faced me in March, 1922, 
had not come upon me at the time I made out this 
report. I had heard of income taxes, but I had 
somehow cheerfully missed paying any. It was not 
until I received the blank forms through the mails 
that I made inquiries which eventually led to the 
loss of something like four thousand dollars of my 
income to the Government! It is not discreet to 
set down here what I think, and more particularly 
what I feel on this subject. I merely whisper my 


329 






A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


doubt whether any league for peace can insure either 
peace or prosperity to a nation so burdened. 

When I expressed myself freely to Mrs. Broad- 
wick on this subject she said, shaking her head, “My 
dear, you are not a widow yet.” 

“No, indeed! Does that make it worse?” I asked, 
referring to these taxes. 

“The head of a family gets an exemption of two 
thousand dollars, but if you have been a good and 
diligent woman all your life and a faithful wife, 
and if your children are all married and gone, and 
if your husband is dead, you can’t claim exemption 
as the head of a family. The Government punishes 
you for raising your children so that they become 
prosperous and independent. And it punishes you 
for being a widow. You get no exemption as the 
head of a family because you have done well and 
raised your family and because your husband is 
dead. I still feel,” she said, regarding me vaguely, 
“as if I were the only living head of my family. 
And you. Aren’t you the head of this house?” 

“I certainly am,” I told her. 

“Well, your Government will give you no credit 
for that. You will discover presently that it doesn’t 
pay to earn much, and that if you lend money at 
eight per cent it will net you less than five per cent, 
and so increase your surtaxes that it will be money 
in your pocket to let your capital lie idle.” 

330 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


One stormy night in January I was sitting alone 
in the library. Mrs. Broadwick was there, but she 
was reading the morning paper, which she always 
did in the evening. And it was like a closed door 
between us, because she invariably held it spread 
wide. That day I had received the cancelled mort¬ 
gages and I experienced only the relief of a dull 
depression. I was wondering hopelessly what 
women think about who have made away with too 
many lovers. I was wondering if anything could 
take the place of love in a woman’s life. What was 
the reason for doing and achieving and making a 
fortune if there was no one to endow with these 
things*? Here was a living example behind the 
paper over there, a very successful old woman who 
could not bring herself to make a will because she 
had no one to whom it would be natural and lov¬ 
ing to leave her property. 

Mrs. Broadwick lowered her paper and looked 
over the top of it at me so keenly that I felt guilty 
of this thought. 

“Nancy, didn’t you hear something*?” she whis¬ 
pered. 

“No, only the wind,” I told her. She was always 
imagining that she heard something! 

“But I did. I do! It is a car! There are the 
lights.” 

While she struggled to rise I hurried into the 

331 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


hall, wondering who could be coming where nobody 
came now except during the business hours of the 
day. 

I flung the front door open. There was a rush 
of wind past a sort of lofty darkness which stood 
perfectly still on the threshold. I had one glimpse 
of his face, of eyes softer than the velvet darkness 
of a summer night. Then I flung myself upon his 
breast. 

“Oh, my dear, you have come!” I whispered. 

Not a word as he held me close, kissing my hair 
and eyes and me. 

But I went on in the gasping whisper of perfect 
happiness: 

“If you had not come I should have died, Black 
Manson!” I sobbed. “Not at once, but for years I 
should have gone on dying and—getting rich— 
and—” 

I broke off in tearful laughter. 

“Good heaven! Close the door. You’ll catch 
your death of cold, Nancy!” we heard the voice of 
Mrs. Broadwick behind us. 

And having waddled around to close the door her¬ 
self, she fixed her eyes accusingly on Black Manson. 

“Why have you waited all this time? Look at 
that child. She is thin. She is pale. A McPherson 
pale! She has been breaking her heart for you!” 

“I had to go, and I had to wait until she won the 

332 


A DAUGHTER OF ADAM 


game,” he laughed, looking down at her and still 
holding me to his breast. 

“Come on in to the fire,” Mrs. Broadwick com¬ 
manded sensibly. 


THE END 


333 




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